Commitment and compliance get used as if they mean the same thing. Commitment persists when nobody is paying for it. Compliance persists exactly as long as the reward does. This Sidebar takes one idea from Tuesday's conversation with Jeff Burstein (he/him), that when a team that was improving slows down, something in its environment changed, and follows it all the way in.

Why "we didn't get real buy-in" is the wrong argument. Why commitment and compliance look identical on a dashboard right up until the reward moves. Why the team is where a problem shows up and almost never why it happened. And why done is not holding: the declaration is the moment the tending ends.

And three things to do Monday, none of which cost money or need permission: build a two-column timeline, read one person's objectives against what you're asking them to do, and name one thing you declared done, then find out who is still holding it.

The full conversation with Jeff Burstein, "It Never Sticks": https://thelaggingteam.com/podcast/0013-it-never-sticks

Jeff Burstein (he/him): Founder, Advanced Enterprise Agility and L-EAF.org · Co-founder, L-EAF Lab. https://www.L-EAF.org

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0014-nothing-changed-but-the-reward&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=nothing-changed-but-the-reward

A transformation can look done and be gone six months later. The deck was fine. The team drifted back to the old way of working, and the signs showed up there months before anyone upstairs wrote them down.

Jeff Burstein has spent more than 20 years coaching enterprise transformations. His argument: when a team that was improving slows down, the question is rarely what the team is doing differently. Something in the environment changed: a new rule, a new policy, a reward that no longer supports the way the team works. And no change in mindset ever simply sticks. You let it go, and the pen comes back to your hand.

Along the way: why people come before process and tools, what velocity is for and what happens when a leader demands it doubled, rote work versus knowledge work, why breakdown comes before breakthrough, and what to tell a leader whose team is behind right now.

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0013-it-never-sticks&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=it-never-sticks

Jeff Burstein (he/him) is an innovator, founder, consultant and enterprise transformation coach. He is the founder of Advanced Enterprise Agility and L-EAF.org and a co-founder of L-EAF Lab.

L-EAF: https://www.L-EAF.org

L-EAF Lab: https://www.L-EAFLab.org

Advanced Enterprise Agility: https://www.AdvancedEnterpriseAgility.com

L-EAF on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/L-EAF

Informed and included get used as if they mean the same thing. Informed means a decision reaches you. Included means you were there while it could still go a different way. This Sidebar takes one line from Tuesday's conversation with Melanie Shires (she/her), accountable for work she wasn't invited to help shape, and follows it all the way in.

Why "the new leader just needs to communicate more" is the wrong argument. Why a well-informed team can still be behind. Why title and standing move independently, and only one of them is written down. And why shielding a team doesn't spare it: the consequences land anyway, with the cause taken out.

And three things to do Monday, none of which cost money or need permission: name the last decision that changed your team's work and who was in the room, move one person from informed to included, and say the cause out loud once.

The full conversation with Melanie Shires: https://thelaggingteam.com/podcast/0011-new-boss-same-team

Melanie's free Inner Authority Alignment Assessment is on her website: https://www.positivelymelanie.com/

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0012-in-the-loop-is-not-in-the-room&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=in-the-loop-is-not-in-the-room

A new boss walks in and nothing changes on paper. Same title, same duties, same team. But the agreements the team was operating under quietly evaporate, and nobody says a word.

Melanie Shires has sat in both chairs. She kept her title as a marketing director while losing her place in the conversations that shaped her work, accountable for work she was no longer invited to help shape. And she has been the new executive walking into a culture built long before she arrived. Her argument: a change in external authority shows how much of your footing was borrowed from it, and you can assess what is happening around you without putting everything you know about yourself on trial.

Along the way: what the team experiences while its leader works through it, why high achievers' boundaries dissolve instead of stretching, the glass balls and rubber balls every leader is juggling, the first agreement a new leader should make with a team, and where protecting people turns into keeping them in the dark. For any leader sandwiched between the people they lead and the people they report to.

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0011-new-boss-same-team&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=new-boss-same-team

Melanie Shires (she/her) is the founder of Positively Melanie and M Studio and the creator of the Inner Authority™ Framework. Her free Inner Authority Alignment Assessment is on her website.

Positively Melanie: https://www.positivelymelanie.com/Melanie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieshires/

Every team says fine. On a survey, in a one-on-one, in a stand-up, it looks the same whether the team is thriving or gave up months ago. This Sidebar takes one line from Tuesday's conversation with Katrina L. Coker (she/her), "We're fine, everything's fine," and follows it all the way in.

Why "any problems?" measures what feels safe rather than what is wrong. Why nothing wrong and something's right are different sentences. Why a team that gets along can still be a team that isn't okay, and why fine gets worse every time a team is asked and hears nothing back.

And three things to do Monday, none of which cost money or need permission: retire "any problems?", read the fours like twos, and close one loop out loud.

The full conversation with Katrina L. Coker: https://thelaggingteam.com/podcast/0009-nobody-asked-the-team

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0010-fine-is-not-a-status&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=fine-is-not-a-status

Katrina L. Coker has walked into team after team where the job had already changed: a new tool nobody chose, a lift-and-shift that turned into a full rebuild, a timeline handed down without a conversation. The people got along. The work kept moving. What was missing was anyone asking the team what it actually thought.

Katrina, known as The Scrum Mother, walks through what she does in her first weeks with a team: the questions she asks everyone, why she takes the answers to leadership before she takes them back to the team, and why she pushes back on calling a team "behind" at all. Along the way: voluntelling, what a defeated team looks like before anyone says so, how she got her name, and when helping a team turns into making it depend on you.

For the leader who inherited a team mid-change, and for anyone on a team whose job description stopped matching the job a while ago.

Added after the recording: Katrina is clear that tight, immovable deadlines are part of business. Her concern is expecting more velocity when the tools, the people and the processes all stay the same.

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0009-nobody-asked-the-team&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=nobody-asked-the-team

Katrina L. Coker is "The Scrum Mother" — CEO of The Scrum Mother, LLC, and the author of ScrumMaster Application and Interview Process (2024) and Scrum Master First 90 Days: The Scrum Mother Approach (2026), available on Amazon in ebook, paperback and hardback. She holds an M.S. in Conflict Management and a B.B.A. in International Business from Kennesaw State University, and lives in Georgia with her two cats, Avery and Fiona.

Find her at scrummother.com, on LinkedIn at /in/katrinalcoker-thescrummother, and as @TheScrumMother on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

The Scrum Mother: https://scrummother.com/Katrina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrinalcoker-thescrummother/

Slow and behind get used as if they mean the same thing. Slow is a fact about a team: how long it takes to turn an idea into something somebody uses. Behind is a comparison, the distance between where the team is and a date somebody picked, usually at the start, when everyone knew the least.

This Sidebar takes one line from Tuesday's conversation with Chris Sims (they/them), somebody set them up to fail, and follows it all the way in. Why a recovery plan quietly produces months of evidence against the team. Why busy is visible and moving isn't. Why the move that got a leader here feels identical to the one now holding them back.

And three things to do Monday, none of which cost money or need permission: trace the date to a name and a reason, put last month's work in two columns, and slow one thing down on purpose.

The full conversation with Chris Sims: https://thelaggingteam.com/podcast/0007-the-harder-you-work-the-behinder-you-get

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0008-nobody-checked-who-set-the-date&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=nobody-checked-who-set-the-date

"Behind" is not a measurement. It is a judgment somebody made against a standard somebody set, and the first useful question is who set it.

Chris Sims has spent a career watching teams answer that badly. The founders whose own strengths quietly became the company's bottleneck. The engineers whose hardest-won expertise stopped being the valuable thing. The leaders whose answer to falling behind was to stay later. They have a line for it, from a mentor who was trying to get them to see it about themself: the harder I work, the behinder I get.

This is a conversation about why the obvious response makes it worse, what slowing down actually buys you, and which skills quietly changed places while everyone was watching the code get written faster. For anyone leading a team through a shift they did not pick.

The Satir change model Chris walks through: https://tlt-clips.b-cdn.net/0007/Assets/Satir-2026-04.pdf

Pendo's 2019 Feature Adoption Report: https://go.pendo.io/rs/185-LQW-370/images/2019%20Feature%20Adoption%20Report%20Digital.pdf

Talk about your team: https://thelaggingteam.com/start?episode=0007-the-harder-you-work-the-behinder-you-get&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=the-harder-you-work-the-behinder-you-get

Chris Sims (they/them) is an agile coach, a Certified Scrum Trainer, and the founder of Agile Learning Labs. AgileLearningLabs.com