Want To Win Big? Focus Small - Mike Cohn

Something momentous happened on December 20, 2020.
Becky Hammon made history as the first woman to ever coach a men’s team in a National Basketball Association professional game. Coach Hammon took over coaching the San Antonio Spurs when head coach Gregg Popovich was ejected in the first half.
After the game, the press asked Coach Hammon what her thoughts had been when her glass-ceiling-busting moment arrived. She said, “Honestly, in the moment I was just trying to win the game. I say this a lot, but I try not to think about the huge picture and the huge aspect of it, because it can get overwhelming.”
I love this attitude. Yes, Hammon was busting through a glass ceiling. And yes, winning the game is the big goal for her and her players. But she also knew that their best chance of winning was to focus on the short term and execute well, play by play.

It’s easy for teams–sports teams and agile ones–to get distracted by how much is riding on the outcome of their endeavor. However, great teams (and their coaches) know that the path to success is achieved one small, well-executed step at a time.

For example, some teams stall—thinking they need to have a perfect and complete product backlog written before starting a project. The perfect, complete product backlog doesn’t exist. And, if it did, it could only be written once the project is finished!

I advise these teams to reframe the question. These teams are trying to answer the question, “What should we build overall?” They instead need to consider, “What should we build next?”

Similarly, organizations stall in their agile adoption efforts waiting for the perfect project or the perfect team of people to become available.
Or they try to map out every step they’ll take on an agile transition.
I worry these organizations have a Gantt chart covering their agile transition hanging on a wall somewhere.

As with a team trying to write a perfect product backlog, an organization waiting for perfect conditions to go agile is asking the wrong question.

And now for what famed radio host Paul Harvey called “The Rest of the Story.”
When Coach Hammon’s big moment arrived in 2020, the Spurs ultimately lost the game. And that’s OK. You don’t win every game you play or make every shot you take.
But you know what Coach Hammon did in 2022? She led the Las Vegas Aces to their first WNBA Championship. Then did it again the year after that, making the Aces the first WNBA team in 20 years to repeat as champions in back-to-back years.
Be like Coach Hammon. Focus on the next thing that needs to be done while keeping the ultimate goal in mind. When you do, you maximize your chances of taking your own teams from good to great,

Success Doesn’t Happen Overnight

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The Future of the Scrum Master Role In 2026

1. The Death of the Ceremony Manager
2. AI Won’t Replace You — But It Will Replace the Version of You That Stops Learning
3. The Role Shifts from “Team-Level Support” to “Delivery System Architect”
4. The Rise of the “Hybrid Delivery Leader”
5. The End of Framework Fundamentalism
6. A New Career Ladder Emerges
7. The Future Scrum Master Is a Culture Engineer
8. What Gets Left Behind

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Most Leadership Courses Are Broken... Mine's Not

Companies weren’t asking for more mentoring , they were asking for transformation. For someone who could walk into a room, change 12 minds, and walk out with measurable impact.

That’s why I created a system that supports leaders at scale based on where they are now, and what potential they can grow into.

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It's Okay To Start Again - Mental Health Episode

At the end of 2025, Maya felt like the year had wrung her out and left her on the floor.

She was sitting alone in her car in a grocery store parking lot, hands wrapped around a coffee that had gone lukewarm an hour ago, staring at the dashboard but not really seeing it. Her phone was full of unopened messages: friends checking in, her manager asking about a missed deadline, her mother sending another “Just making sure you’re okay” text.

She wasn’t okay.
In the span of twelve months, she had watched a relationship she thought would end in marriage quietly dissolve, lost a job she’d poured herself into, and moved back into a small, echoing apartment that felt more like a storage unit for her disappointment than a home. Every time she opened social media, it seemed like everyone else was posting highlight reels: promotions, engagements, babies, book deals. She felt like the only one stuck on repeat.

“I’m so behind,” she whispered to no one in particular, the words fogging up the windshield.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s stretched in front of her like a hallway she didn’t want to walk down. One night, she sat on the floor of her living room, surrounded by half‑unpacked boxes, and opened an old notebook. On the first page, in handwriting that looked a little more hopeful, she saw a list titled: “Goals for 2020.” It was a collage of big dreams—start a business, run a half‑marathon, travel more, learn another language.

Almost none of them had happened.

The familiar wave of shame rose in her chest: See? You never finish what you start. Something’s wrong with you. She almost closed the notebook, but something in her—small and stubborn—stopped her hand.

What if, just for one night, she didn’t treat this list as a report card? What if she treated it as a love letter from a younger version of herself who believed in her?

Maya picked up a pen and wrote, in darker ink across the top of the page:

“Begin again.”

She drew a line down the middle of the paper. On the left, she wrote “Things that ended in 2025.” On the right, “Seeds I’m carrying into 2026.” Under “things that ended,” she let herself name them: the relationship, the job, the version of herself who pretended everything was fine to keep the peace. There were tears as she wrote, but there was also relief in acknowledging that some chapters had truly closed.

She realized that even in a year that felt like wreckage, seeds had been planted. She’d taken a free online course in the evenings about content creation. She’d started sharing small posts about resilience and healing, just for herself, with a handful of followers who would quietly message, “I needed this.” She’d gone on evening walks to clear her head and noticed that, even on the hardest days, she always felt a little more like herself after twenty minutes under the sky.

They weren’t big achievements. They were gentle threads. But they were real.

On New Year’s Eve, instead of going out, Maya lit a candle on her kitchen counter and made herself a simple dinner. The apartment was still cluttered, and there were still unanswered emails and bills she didn’t know how she’d pay yet. Nothing external had magically fixed itself.

But at 11:50 p.m., she did something different. She pulled out another blank page and wrote one sentence at the top:

“In 2026, I will start small and start honestly.”

She chose three tiny beginnings—so small they almost felt silly.

• Ten minutes each morning without her phone, just breathing, journaling, or looking out the window.

• One honest conversation a week, where she told the truth instead of saying “I’m fine.”

• One piece of creative work posted every week, whether or not she thought it was perfect.

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The Future of Agile in 2026 - My TOP 3 Predictions!

This video WILL BE the number ONE MOST listened to episode for 2026 and beyond! Here I make three predictions about the future of Agile in 2026 and beyond.

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The Top 5 Daily Standup Podcast Episodes of 2025

1. Poltergeist Meetings — When Meetings Throw Things - October 29, 2025
2. The 5 Stages of Leadership - September 30, 2025
3. Agile Contracting Models in 2025 - June 10, 2025
4. The 1-Minute Introduction That Makes People Remember You Forever - August 21, 2025
5. Start With No... Why Most People Should NOT Be Managers - March 27, 2025

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Why Shipping One Thing Beats Planning Ten

Good processes don’t look impressive.
They quietly help you move forward.

And when you’re building real-world products,
that’s what actually matters.

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Finding Your Fit as a ScrumMaster

Here’s something nobody told me when I started as a Scrum Master: the most important interview isn’t the one where they ask you about impediment removal or sprint velocity.

It’s the one you have with yourself.

Everyone talks about whether you’re a good fit for the role. But what about whether the environment is a good fit for you?

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