E131: Agile and Sustainability in the UK with Mike Wrathall

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In this episode, I share an interview with Mike Wrathall, where I explore his background in strategy, agile methods and sustainability. His early career involved building digital services, primarily for government and social housing organizations, such as streamlining the process for getting people who are homeless or victims of domestic violence into safe housing quicker. Serving as a business analyst, he was immediately immersed in agile ways of working to improve customer experience and address issues like inefficient matching of people to suitable housing. He later applied these skills while working on projects for the Department for Education, including developing curriculum material delivery and replacing digital systems for teacher training and university placement, ensuring the work felt impactful.

His work transitioned into dedicated sustainability consulting, first at Deloitte and later on his own, driven by his belief that for-profit companies can drive positive change. He highlighted key projects demonstrating innovative financial models for sustainability, and his involvement in creating a service for UK farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture through 3rd party funding. Another impactful area was his work with McLaren, where efforts to increase circularity in F1 cars.

A core theme of the discussion was the application of agile to sustainability, which he defines as a fundamental mindset of inspect and adapt, a continuous feedback loop for organizational learning and improvement. He emphasized that agility is not about avoiding planning, but planning iteratively and constantly, adjusting based on new information rather than following rigid, outdated Gantt charts. The interview concluded by focusing on the financial sector’s role, particularly the insurance industry, which creates and consumes vast amounts of data and is uniquely positioned to incentivize sustainable change by ratcheting premiums up or down.

00:18 Meet Mike Wrathall: Background and Journey
00:31 Early Career and Education
01:37 Early Career: Tech Consulting and Agile Exposure
04:08 Digital Transformation in Social Housing
06:49 Advancing Education through Digital Services
08:56 Transition to Sustainability Consulting
13:46 Innovative Projects: Soil Association and McLaren
28:06 Agile and Scrum: Principles and Practices
36:25 The Role of Insurance in Sustainability
39:35 Conclusion and Contact Info

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Transcript
Note: may contain typos and errors, generated with AI

Brion
Today I have Mike Wrathall with us today. Mike, you’ve got some background in strategy and agile and sustainability. Can you walk us through some of your background and how you got to this point?
Mike
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks, Brion, for having me. Education wise, started at Oxford University. Whilst I was there, I was doing economics and management, which had a fair bit of strategy and organizational analysis and things like that in it. was always an area that interested me. And I always saw myself going down the consulting route. At that time, hadn’t heard of agile and was, I guess, personally interested in sustainability, was always a stickler for recycling and things at home, but didn’t necessarily know much about the world of sustainability and the business world of sustainability. But what I did believe in, and I actually did a module on entrepreneurship and innovation, which had a little bit of this, is the power of private for-profit enterprise to achieve good in the world. And that was really a driving factor for me to learn more about business was how can we have businesses that make money, but also have a positive impact on the world. So that was something really key for me throughout my studies. Having left Oxford and then spent a year actually in Australia with my partner, which was excellent, I then went consulting, building digital services, working predominantly with government, but also with some private sector firms in the social housing and education spaces. So building digital services to make people’s lives better, for example, getting people into social housing quicker, particularly if they’ve been made homeless or are victims of domestic violence and things like that. How do we get those people into safe and secure housing faster? Working with a number of organizations to bring together lots of local authorities, lots of housing associations and really try and create positive impact in that space and also building digital services in education. My role in those projects as a business analyst, and this is where I was first really exposed to agile ways of working, is in software delivery teams, which I guess is where agile, once you get past the lean manufacturing phase, really took off. Yeah, as a business analyst, being that go-between between design, development, users, user researchers, and trying to create a compelling vision and compelling stories for how we can build something that is useful and that makes sense and delivers value. I once heard a business analyst role described as polyfiller. You do all the bits in a team that need to be done. Developers are off coding, user researchers are talking to customers, designers are creating beautiful designs that hopefully work. And as a business analyst, you are gluing it all together and playing that role, which I really enjoyed and was a really good, I think, introduction to Agile because I worked in some really high performing teams, particularly within UK government in the education space, really excellent individuals practicing Agile, working in Agile software development teams and building some really fantastic public services.
Brion
Would you say your experience was non-agile at 1st and then it transitioned or right off the bat they were already getting in early with agile methods?
Mike
I didn’t really know at the time. much about agility and about agile formally. My very first project was an alpha. So coming off the back of a discovery project that had done some user centered thinking, scoping of a problem space and coming in and taking that next further, developing a service blueprint and teeing things up to go into development. Already straight away into that agile mindset and working off a backlog and really trying to be user centered. So yeah, immediately into agility. even though I didn’t formally know much about it at that point in time.
Brion
The effort around the social housing, was that part of a big initiative or was just a specific need that one of the agencies had to try and fix an existing problem?
Mike
So it was a classic part of the digital transformation era, where a housing association at first, we’re looking at how do we move towards digitalization? How do we go from these massive paper stacks and huge manual forms that people need to fill in before we can even look at their application for social housing? And how do we make that process quicker? And so it was really a digital first, what can we do to this whole process that isn’t just putting a paper form onto a screen and making it a digital form, but is actually transforming how we do things and speeding up the touch points and creating a better customer experience. And then that housing association was actually in the northeast of England and had close relationships with lots of local authorities and other housing associations that worked with those local authorities. And so we ended up building almost the same platform, but for two different clients, where one client was this initial client and the other was this body that comprised, I think it was three or four different local authorities and four or five different housing associations. And actually getting these two platforms to speak to each other because they operate in the same jurisdiction. They have slightly different rules to how they assess people. And that was a really fascinating digital transformation piece in itself. How do we get people who need it into housing quicker?
Brion
Very cool. Were you able to see how that process changed after the transformation and getting the system up and running? Did they? share any results or changes that they experienced.
Mike
The feedback afterwards was actually really key. We remained a partner as it was implemented and as the system started to be run. I actually moved on to some other projects within the Department for Education. The client came back a couple months in, a year later, a couple years later, and I was hearing really good things about the number of applications they were able to get through, the number of people that they’re getting into housing much, much faster and into better quality housing. But I want One of the big problem spaces we were exploring with this digital transformation was the matching of people with housing and making sure people are being matched with housing that actually fits their needs, whether it’s mobility, whether it’s family size, whether it’s location, opportunities and things like that. The broad spread of how you actually match people and the inefficiency that was going on beforehand was one of the key things they kept going back and saying, this is really, really working now.
Brion
So you mentioned switching over to work with education. Can you talk about some of the projects or some of the things you’re working on there?
Mike
Yeah, so one of the first projects I did in the Alpha project that I mentioned was looking at how we deliver curriculum materials to teachers better. There’s a massive problem in the UK, and I imagine globally as well, with newly qualified teachers after a couple of years exiting the workforce. demands we place on our teachers and the support they get is shocking. The project was looking at how do we get good quality teaching materials into teachers hands, following really good logical theory and making their life easier and overcoming some of the barriers in the profession. So gatekeeping of materials from more experienced teachers, which is an issue. It’s not the biggest issue, but certainly doesn’t help. And the expectation, I think, from schools and from the government that teachers create their own materials to a large extent, run their own lessons, which is great to have that freedom. But if you’re a newly qualified teacher, I think you need more support than that. And so that was a really interesting project that then moved through to a beta stage. And then I was part of a team that replaced, have a system called UCAS, which is how people apply for university. And it’s how people apply for teacher training with universities and with schools. And we built a government digital service, which replaced that. So we built the service, dual ran it for a year, and then completely took over from UCAS. And again, it was similar problem statement of how do we get more teachers into teaching? how do we make the process of application smoother, but also how do we allow providers of teacher training to select their candidates and go through that whole process of CV interviews, et cetera, to get people into the right kinds of courses that will work for them. So really, yeah, again, worthwhile. It felt impactful, the work I was doing whilst I was at that tech consultancy.
Brion
Were you continuing on with other projects with that company or at what point did you move into consulting on your own?
Mike
Yeah, so I actually did a little bit of on my own consulting for about six months in the healthcare space, did some strategy work, but then I moved into Deloitte’s sustainability and climate strategy team. So that’s where my pre-existing belief in the power of for-profit companies to do good really came into its own working in that strategy team focused on sustainability, focused on serving the public and the private sectors to enable sustainable outcomes, I did a lot of work on the climate tech proposition and the Deloitte’s Green Space tech database, which is a climate hard tech database of startups and suppliers and things like that can be matched with clients. Yeah, so working in that team was amazing for my view of the world in terms of how sustainability can permeate everything. Working with amazing people who had niches in energy or biodiversity and working on some really cool projects across regenerative agriculture, energy efficiency.
Brion
Would you say that a lot of the clients were requesting that support or was Deloitte going out and offering and trying to get them interested in services like that?
Mike
I would say a real mix. Towards the end of my time there, I think We were dipping into recession. I think clients were scaling back their sustainability strategy spend. There were at the time two teams in Deloitte, a risk advisory based team dealing with the compliance, the legislation around sustainability, doing a lot of the circularity work, the lifecycle assessments, things like that. And then there was the team I was in, the sustainability strategy team. Those offerings have now merged, which I think is smart. And one of the reasons I actually left at the time I did was before I knew that merger was happening, was it felt like the strategy angle wasn’t as strong on its own as it could have been if paired with the type of work that does the baselining, that gets the data, that identifies the hotspots, et cetera. The compliance and legislation area, whilst less sexy, for want of a better word, was the stuff that didn’t get dropped during recession. If the legislation is still in place, you still have to do the reporting. You still have to comply. The strategy stuff, the opportunity space, which is for me the most interesting bit, but understandably is the bit that goes when you’re looking to cut costs, et cetera. So those are now merged with Deloitte. And actually one of the things I wanted to bring out as I struck out on my own was can I Can I do more of the operationalizing of the sustainability? Can I do more of the tangible offering alongside that strategic mindset in order to create something a little bit more robust? And it’s good to see that is, I think a general trend in the industry is less people saying, we’re going to build you a shiny sustainability report and more people saying, we’re going to get the data, we’re going to act on it and we’re going to help you drive real outcomes because that’s what sustainability needs. It needs real outcomes.
Brion
And do you feel that a lot of the organizations have some data already, or are you finding having to help them develop or measure things to be able to see how they’re doing or come up with a plan?
Mike
I think data in the industry is really patchy. Since going solo, I’ve worked a lot less on sustainability. So for example, the client I’m working on now is a renewable energy client, rather than doing their sustainability journey, I’m trying to help them grow as a business. So getting hands-on with operations and they’re a global client, but have a particular focus on European solar. And so really trying to work out how we can make the businesses their sing. You end up doing more classic consultancy in terms of where are the efficiencies, where are the opportunities for synergies, et cetera. But you’re doing it in a space that has real impact.
Brion
Yeah, so they’re already thinking that way. And now it’s just helped them perform better as an organization, get more sales.
Mike
Exactly. And doing that horizon scanning. So when will digital product passports be necessary for batteries? When will it be necessary for solar? Who’s going to be the one to develop that? Is it the supplier? Is it the installer organizations? And so being aware of the legislation and compliance space. in order to drive the next two to five years of operational activities, providing that central support to drive some of those initiatives. Because it can be a lot, if you’re a small solar supplier in France, it can be a lot for you to juggle and to take on and be aware of compared to if an organization centrally is doing that for you, others, and others across the EU.
Brion
I heard you first on the Going Zero podcast, and you’re talking about a charity that you’re helping with. And then also McLaren, if you could talk a little bit about how that fit into your work and how those projects unfold.
Mike
Yeah, absolutely. So really interesting projects, which I worked on whilst I was at Deloitte. So the charity, so Soil Association in the UK is a charity that looks to improve soil health in the UK for UK farms. At the time, they were spinning up the Soil Association Exchange, which is a owned subsidiary of the charity and operates with other partners, private sector partners as a for-profit entity, in a bid to actively help UK farmers move in a more regenerative direction. So the services they provide are things like carbon soil baselining, biodiversity baselining on the farms, et cetera, then a report, a bit of consultancy to work out how those farms can improve. And what was really fascinating about that is the work I was doing is the value proposition design. We’re building this new platform. It’s an online platform and a service where people are going out. How do we monetize it? How do we make this something that will stand on its own 2 feet without the constant need for further investment or for charitable endowments and things like that? which is a fascinating problem because farmers have no money. And so the razor thin margins that they’re operating on often don’t allow them to make the investments they would need to make in order to transition to more regenerative, more sustainable ways of working. And so what was really interesting there was working on that value proposition and identifying actually, key players who would pay for this, we’re talking banks, we’re talking retailers, we’re talking supermarkets, organizations for whom farmers fall into their scope 3 emissions and their impact on the world from a supply chain perspective, who are now due to legislation, due to public sentiment, really keen and concerned with what that scope 3 looks like and so will pay. to try and decarbonize that aspect of their supply chain, try and move that supply chain in a more regenerative direction. So you’ve got a product then that’s aimed at farmers, paid for by these third parties who have farmers in their portfolios or their supply chains, overall contributing to this movement of regeneration in UK agriculture, which is absolutely fantastic. And last I checked, they’ve added quite a lot to the portfolio. They’re looking at expanding into Europe, and they are going from absolute strength to strength, which is just fantastic to see, really.
Brion
Yeah, that’s great to be able to see and understand like who can support this, who’s got the incentive to do it, who’s got the financial means to be able to do that, and helping those smaller organizations that, you know, they can’t hire someone, they can’t learn all this and transform their farm that quickly and easily, right? It’s a massive change. And so to be able to get them connected in with their customers and having them help them drive that, I think that’s really powerful.
Mike
Yeah, absolutely. I wonder where there are other parallels for things like this in the industrial and commercial space, small businesses that maybe don’t own their buildings. the capital to invest, how do they get solar? How do they get renewable energy into their operational space? Are there stakeholders who either have these businesses in their supply chain or who are the warehouse owners, the building operators, who could be incentivized to invest in doing that? And then again, you’re getting this divorce of who’s doing the operationalizing, who’s doing the implementation and who’s paying for it. Ultimately, everybody wins because we’re moving in a more sustainable direction, but it’s identifying, yeah, where do the capital flows come from? Are they always the same as the customer? They don’t have to be.
Brion
Yeah, and I think that was a question that would come up when I was part of our green team. We had a discussion around what buildings are owned and which ones are leased, and that was helping prioritize our work. But it did feel like the leased buildings didn’t have many options because that was a little more challenging. Do you put something up? Do you own it? Does the building own it now? Can it be done logistically? Who’s paying the electric bills? Some of those things were very challenging. And so they almost didn’t even look at it because it’s not as simple. And unfortunately, there was a lot of opportunity there that got left because no one had worked through the details of what would it look like and who do we talk to get something moving in that direction. And someone has an incentive, but trying to figure all that out is challenging.
Mike
Absolutely. And I think a lot of good sustainable outcomes are missed because of that mismatch in agency and who does what, who pays for what, are the expectations. And those are maybe some really interesting thorny problems to work through because you can unlock areas that may be underserviced.
Brion
How has the UK been able to bring in more financial ties to sustainability? I’m not sure if there’s any carbon taxes or anything like that in place. Is there any other things financially that help make the business case for some of sustainable efforts in the UK right now?
Mike
Yeah, so I think there’s obviously voluntary carbon markets, and I think they by and large failed. I think there’s a lot of learnings that have been taken into voluntary biodiversity markets and things like that. There are obviously other initiatives and things around carbon pricing across EU and UK. I would say probably the most successful with a TBC on it is the biodiversity net gain legislation that’s come into place. So requiring all construction projects, infrastructure projects to have a net gain of at least 10% when it comes to biodiversity and having a hierarchy for that where really it should be met on site. If you’re going to develop a piece of land, can you improve the biodiversity on the site as you develop it? But then this tiered structure where you can then, if it’s impossible to do on site, you go for nearby within the local area or you then go wider and wider within England. and the markets around that provide the pricing for different uplifts in different from a baseline from whether it’s already a forest through to, if it’s a meadow and then you’re making it become a forest, you get different uplifts in the statutory pricing on those net gains. I think biodiversity units that are being sold and bought. And I think that’s really powerful because, you know, I think it’s one of those things that makes intuitive sense to us all in terms of Okay, we’re building more houses. Can we do so in the best possible way? I think we all perhaps would have expected by now, new construction, new residential homes should all have solar panels on by default. That feels like something that could be put into legislation. And I think it’s being discussed by this government at the moment to come in around 2027. Don’t quote me on that. But I think it’s really interesting because it makes intuitive sense to us. Can you leave it in a better place than it was? But what are actually the mechanisms if you can’t? And I think that pricing and tiered efforts for doing it on site, nearby and wider, I think can be really powerful. I think we’re still quite early. and hence the TVC as to how successful that will be. But it certainly seems like a really good push and perhaps a push that is ahead of the curve in terms of where a lot of other countries are at.
Brion
I wasn’t familiar with that biodiversity units and costing and stuff like that. So maybe we can put some links to additional information if people want to learn more, including myself. That’s great. What else, the McLaren, what was some of the work done around circularity?
Mike
That was really interesting and I had a great time working with McLaren, not on the circularity project, but again on social impact pieces, so taking some year 12 kids from… underprivileged area and giving them a sustainability strategy program in conjunction with McLaren, through which they could learn about McLaren, they could learn about sustainability, they could learn about strategic frameworks and things and apply that to a group project over six months. We went to the McLaren Tech Center a couple of times. and just an amazing organization doing amazing things. And as a papaya fan, very much hoping that they will clinch the constructor’s title this year, but also quietly hoping for a British Lando Norris victory on the driver’s championship. Fantastic organization. And one of the big projects Deloitte was doing with them more broadly was this circularity piece. With cost cap regulations, it’s a really interesting incentive in F1 to be more efficient, be more, maximize outputs for a given cost. So actually, when you’re looking at something like circularity on an F1 car, you’re not just looking at a do good, feel good initiative that reduces our carbon. You’re looking at a very real competitive advantage of if we can reuse these parts or remold them, recycle efficiently cheaper, we can do more development, implement more things than our competitors and potentially outstrip them. So it’ll be really interesting to see with the change of regulations next year, whole new advantage this season carries through into that. But certainly the mentality that developing a project to look at circularity with an F1 car and start to think in new ways about how we come up against these constraints and how we do better and also get more competitive by doing better. Certainly that mentality to me would suggest that they’re going to be well positioned.
Brion
Yeah, I think that’s not an industry that people think of in terms of sustainability. So it’s good to hear companies and hopefully that spreads through the competition.
Mike
Exactly. And I think a lot of the work that goes on in F1 does permeate more widely. So McLaren Racing is one of the brands, but other McLaren brands that work on this technological development, you do see that start to disseminate into the wider auto world or into the aerospace. Obviously lots of money being thrown around in F1, but there are quite tangible impacts of that research that can go beyond the sport. looking at things like sustainable fuels and increasing the sustainable fuel mix that has to go into the cars, the introduction of battery power into the cars. I think these are all fascinating innovations that come from a sport that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as sustainable and that frankly isn’t sustainable right now, but it’s certainly showing appetite I think the French Grand Prix has a massive load of solar panels powering the site, the events on the day. Lots of Grand Prix encouraging cycling in, ride type things. So you’re reducing the traffic, the congestion nearby. It’s got a long way to go, but it certainly seems to be moving in the right direction.
Brion
In the US here, we’re seeing some sporting venues and organizations like National Football League start to try and green the Super Bowl and offer more reusable cups and things like that at the stadiums. And so I think, getting these big sport brands on board where they have access to everybody and being able to nudge and influence them while they’re going to an event, I think is really powerful. And so I think that’s, there’s some great momentum happening in the sports industry.
Mike
I totally agree. And I think it’s great in terms of, I think the intent filters through. So fans, pick up on that energy and perhaps take a little bit of that away, which is great. I think the intent is also a great place to start. I think we obviously have to be careful that we’re doing it right and that we are creating the data we need to see whether we’re on the right trajectory. Reusable not always better than single use. If you look at life cycle assessments and you take into account the actual reuse rates and things like that, but certainly I think the intention is the right place to start. I think that filters through. And I think if we can create that impetus to continue learning, that’s where agility plays a great role in sustainability. Because for me, agility is fundamentally about that inspect and adapt feedback loop. How do we create something, start, do it, get out in the world, learn from it, and then make it better. And I think we can really seize impetus by doing that and by doing that continuously. So it’s really great to see. And hopefully we’ll see a sustainable Super Bowl. Hopefully the Lions will be there, all sports and industries and music, et cetera, where these big events are happening. I think we’re seeing a lot of innovation there. Hopefully we can continue seeing that evolution into just systems that work better, systems that are more sustainable.
Brion
Yeah, I think that the venues can make progress there. You’re going to hit a lot of people, whether it’s through music or through sporting events or theater. And so they start to see these things when they’re out and now they may bring some of that back to their personal lives. That would be really powerful. Yeah, that’s exciting.
Mike
Absolutely. It’s interesting how many people I know from my time in digital who have talked about using a Kanban board to plan their wedding and things like that, where you do start to internalize some of these principles, some of these practices, and you think, well, if it works there, why wouldn’t it work over here? I can definitely take that home.
Brion
Yes, absolutely. I think that’s a great place to practice and learn and try out these ideas and very, very applicable.
Mike
Yeah, absolutely. My most recent Agile practice is in Scrum. So it’s not Lean 6, but is in Scrum. I’ve not yet referred to everyone in the house as developers. We don’t have a product owner of Scrum Master, but yeah, certainly taking some of the bits away.
Brion
And how would you explain Agile and Scrum to someone who wasn’t familiar with that?
Mike
There have been a lot of cowboys in taking the Agile banner and trying to run with it. What I’ve seen as well is last year doing quite a bit of work in a very hierarchical organization that had contact with Agile professionals. common framing was agile doesn’t work. Why are you here trying to do this scrum thing? Trying to explain that perhaps what you’ve heard about agile doesn’t necessarily encompass agile. Agility is just about that inspect and adapt mindset. How do we as an organization embed learning so that the organization that we have in a year’s time is that much better than the organization we have now? and actually saying to two people, we don’t know the answers as to how this works in your organization. So we’re going to try certain things, learn from them and go from there and scale that as appropriate, rather than come in with a rigid set of rules that you have to follow. And to a lot of people, even a lightweight framework like Scrum feels like a rigid set of rules. And what you try and get through is that idea of this is why we’re doing it. If you need to adapt, you can adapt, but know that every adaptation takes you away from the core theory. But also this stuff that we’re teaching you feels rigid now because you’re not used to it. Teams that run this very quickly This becomes background. This is the framework around which your life revolves, but it’s very much just taking away some of the power and thought and wasted time that goes on this stuff anyway. It’s making it easier. It’s making it background. And once you’ve learned it, once you’ve done it for one sprint, for two sprints, for three sprints, it becomes something that just enables you and you don’t even have to think about it really. You’re constantly inspecting, adapting, because that is to just part of your process and that’s how you do business now. So that’s, I guess, one of my big get throughs to clients is agile is a mindset and it’s really about how do we get better over time? You can start to throw in key principles. How do we remove blockers or impediments? How do we prioritize? I think those are two pillars that are really key to start with when you’re looking at introducing agility. And you can obviously pick a framework, lean six, you can pick Scrum, you can pick Kanban, pick your model, try and drive those things through. But at their heart, what is agile for? It’s for creating a learning organization, a learning team, and doing things in a way that creates real value. I think that’s probably the other key part is we’re not just getting quicker and better at delivering useless stuff. We’re delivering meaningful stuff that has value. We know who we’re delivering it for.
Brion
Yeah, that’s so important on the data. People don’t want to waste time. They don’t want to do something that doesn’t lead to results. And yet I see the same problem. There’s a lot of actions and things that are being done or intended to be done. And it’s like, well, is that working? How is that going? It’s not clear or very strong evidence to say that it’s working. I feel like the focus is a lot of times on the actions and not necessarily which ones are making a difference. And is it making a difference? A lot of great ideas out there and a lot of people will bring forward great ideas, but that’s That may not work for this situation and this process, for this product, for this service. It all has to be checked and verified and tested. And until we do that, we don’t really know for sure if it will work in this scenario. I think that’s critical. And to do that, you have to have a discussion up front of how are we going to know that this is going to work? Do we even have the data right now or do we need to start gathering something so we can measure?
Mike
Yeah, exactly. And I think people confuse certainty with value. So if we have this plan that says we’re going to deliver this in six weeks, that’s value. We’re not wasting any time. Whereas actually, if we have a backlog for sprints one, two, and three, but nothing beyond that, because we don’t know yet, people get scared by that. But I think that’s where you say, actually, we’re reducing the time wasted, because we might get six weeks into our six week plan, and we’re not even close to delivering value. Whereas six sprints that have been planned iteratively as we go, we have worked out some things. We have pivoted potentially six more times. And so we’re closer to what it is we’re trying to get to, which I think is really key. Certainty is almost a myth. There is no certainty. You can pretend there is and find out later, or you can embrace the ambiguity, embrace the certainty. I love the conversation you have with people when they say, well, Agile’s about not planning, right? You don’t plan in Agile. It’s like, Agile, you plan all the time. You plan every day, you plan in every standup, you plan in every daily scrum, every sprint planning, every week you are planning and you are pivoting and you are adjusting based on the information you’re receiving. You’re planning all the time, but it doesn’t feel like you’re locked away in a room creating a Gantt chart every week. It’s part of the process. It’s light touch and it enables you to stay on track. I think that’s really powerful. And I’ve started doing it a launch project recently with a client I’m working with in the renewable energy space. Had a guy come in who is X big four consultancy. He’s never done agile. I said, we’re going to run things in an agile way. We’ve got a backlog. We’re doing weekly sprints. We do a retro end of the week. We do planning at the beginning of the week. We do estimation in relative story points. And we’ve been doing it for a week. And I said, look, I know this is a lot of overhead at the start learning. And he said, no, this is already great. I hate crediting Gantt charts. They’re always out of date a few days in. I can see the value in this already. And I’m really happy with doing it. Hopefully he will feel the same way in a few weeks, in a month. But yeah, it’s really testament to this idea that agile is about delivering value in the process and in the delivery. And you can see that in the time you get back. He said, we might have spent hours planning all of this stuff. I said, yeah. And it’s taken half an hour at the beginning of the week just to top and tail it. It’s great.
Brion
Yeah, I like that because you’re typically putting all this effort up front before you even get started. And now you can get started quickly and adjust and you’re still putting that planning, but it’s now bite sized and it’s more real time and it’s based on real information and feedback. And so it seems like a no-brainer that would be a much better approach for any deployment of something without, I don’t even know if there’s really a good roadmap of something that’s already established that wouldn’t still benefit from an Agile approach. It seems like a much better way of doing things.
Mike
I totally agree. And even if you can’t implement Agile at a team level… Are there things you can do to the organization to improve agility? So where are problems going when they arise? Do they get solved at the lowest possible level? Do they get lost or they get tracked? Can you create some impediment flow through the organization so that the problems that really need to be solved by those over here in the organization or up here in the organization, get to them effectively, get to them quickly. How do you cascade that up and down? I think is a really powerful one. And then how do we prioritize? How do we as an organization, as strategy down or team up, how do we enable the people at the bottom to prioritize effectively in a linked way with the rest of the organization’s vision and what other teams are doing. Even if you can’t go in and create scrum teams or individual teams that are following this, what are the things you can do at organization level to create that scale of agility? It’s an interesting set of problems, but ultimately value deriving.
Brion
Anything else about your consulting?
Mike
I think probably just add doing quite a bit of work in the financial services, in the insurance space. I think it’s a really under tapped sector for sustainability. Insurance is a partner sector to every single other sector, right? Even as a consultant, I can’t operate, can’t win clients if I don’t have professional indemnity, public liability, insurance. Insurance has a massive role to play in terms of what goes ahead, in terms of what happens in our world, in terms of what businesses are operating. And so doing a lot of work in the opportunity space around insurance, working with different organizations to look at what are the hats that my organization can wear as we transition to a more sustainable economy. And can we test things in an agile way and learn and get better? How can our offering as an industry change? Because it’s going to have to change. The principles that the insurance industry operates under are threatened by climate change. How do we evolve as an industry? And again, as different types of organizations, what are the hats that we can wear to make sure we’re responding to that effectively? So lots of really interesting stuff in the financial services space broadly, but also really enjoying working in that insurance space and looking at how the industry as a whole can not just benefit and thrive in a transitioned world, but be part of the driver for that. And maybe there’ll be some firms that benefit by having that reputation as someone who put their hands up and said, you know, we can help, we can drive the opportunity here. And there are lots of different ways to do that. We’d love to talk more about that to people if they are interested.
Brion
I think the insurance industry has an opportunity to really help build that business case. if you can show that your rates will go up or can come down if you can take on more sustainable practices and address some of these issues that is going to be more costly going forward, that could really get the attention of businesses to make them see that it’s not just the right thing to do, but there’s financial benefits to be gained. So yeah, that’s exciting to hear that they’re continuing to get more engaged in this and see the connections there.
Mike
Yeah, I totally agree. And we’ve spoken a lot from an agile sense about data. The insurance industry creates and consumes vast amounts of data. So is a really key player for providing that data to themselves for pricing and premium making decisions, where to provide cover, et cetera, in terms of how are they performing? And yes, can we incentivize change through ratcheting premiums up and down? Or if you do X, things will become cheaper for you. great. Can the industry provide that data to policymakers, to legislators to say, this is what we’re seeing and you need to act in these areas, in these hotspots, et cetera. Yeah, it’s data, super powerful from an agile perspective, super key from a sustainability perspective. And again, insurance as an industry, incredibly well placed already to play a role there.
Brion
Great. Anything else you’d like to share?
Mike
We’ve covered a lot of ground. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. wrathallconsulting.co.uk is the website.
Brion
I’ll put a link on there and a link to your LinkedIn profile too.
Mike
Perfect. Excellent. And thanks very much for having me. It’s been a really interesting discussion.
Brion
Thanks for all your time and keep up the great work.
Mike
Thanks, Brion.

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