When Culture Gets in the Way of Agility

(and What Scrum Masters Can Do About It)

Using the Competing Values Framework to understand the unseen tensions we’re caught in

At the Online Scrum Master Summit 2025, I started my talk with a vulnerable story and a simple but uncomfortable truth: Scrum Masters often feel stuck. They’re told to facilitate collaboration, create safety, and empower teams. But what happens when the larger organization values speed over dialogue, delivery over reflection, and order over emergence?

What happens, in other words, when your team is playing Clan but your company is playing Market?

Culture isn’t just what’s painted on the office walls or posted on onboarding decks. It’s what actually happens when decisions are made when pressure hits.

In my talk Organisational Culture Uncovered: What Scrum Masters Need to Know, I challenged us to move beyond “tools and techniques” for culture isn’t just the backdrop; it’s the operating system we’re running Agile on. And it is the culture that drives how decisions are made and who gets to make them.

To understand these tensions, we need a lens that makes them visible. That’s where the Competing Values Framework (CVF) comes in, not as a theoretical model, but as a way to name what we sense but can’t always articulate.

The Competing Values Framework was developed at the University of Michigan as part of a comprehensive effort to determine what makes organizations effective. The researchers specified two deep tensions:

Flexibility vs. Stability: Does the organization embrace change or control?
Internal vs. External Focus: Does it prioritize people and processes, or results and competition?

These two tensions intersect to form cultural quadrants, each with its values, leadership logic, pitfalls, and traps.

CVF names organisational cultures in the following way (as seen on the visual)

A: Clan: people-first, collaboration, trust.

B: Adhocracy: innovation, risk-taking, vision.

C: Market: results, competition, delivery.

D: Hierarchy: structure, stability, process.

Let’s say your team is deeply collaborative, but leadership keeps pushing quarterly KPIs and dashboards. That’s a Clan team in a Market org, and unless you help them navigate that tension, you’ll keep spinning in circles.

Or maybe you’re on a team bursting with ideas, thriving in Adhocracy, but stuck in a Hierarchy system that punishes deviation from “how we’ve always done it.” Burnout creeps in, not from too much work, but from too much friction. Naming the mismatch is the first step toward meaningful change.

Here’s how I recommend using the CVF in your practice:

1. Name the Tension

Say the quiet part out loud. Try:

“We’re showing up like a Clan, but our KPIs are pure Market.”
“This retro feels like a ritual without consequence. What would make it real again?”

Naming doesn’t solve everything, but it helps people stop feeling like it’s just them.

2. Mirror Back Cultural Patterns

Use retrospectives and 1-on-1s to reflect not just process performance but emotional tone. Is the team hesitant to challenge leadership? That’s not just a confidence issue; it may be a deep internalization of Hierarchy.

3. Reclaim Rituals

As I said in my talk, rituals become powerful when they create trust, consequences, and room for impact. If they’re not doing that, they’re just theatre.

Make small tweaks:

Invite real feedback in retros.
Let teams co-create ceremonies.
Pause before the standard check-in and ask: “Is this still serving us?”

4. Coach Across Quadrants

Adapt your leadership stance:

In Clan, be a mentor. Focus on trust and growth.
In Adhocracy, be a visionary. Support creativity but offer grounding.
In Market, be a coach. Push for outcomes, but humanely.
In Hierarchy, be a guide. Work within a structure but soften the edges.

Frameworks like CVF don’t give you all the answers, but they help reveal where you’re stuck. Agile doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It lives or dies in culture.

We’re not just coaching ceremonies, we’re coaching meaning.
We’re not just scaling Agile, we’re scaling human systems.

If you’re feeling like your influence is limited, maybe the dominant culture hasn’t been named yet.

The Competing Values Framework gives you language, and your coaching gives it life.

Don’t wait for culture to shift from above. Start naming it, shaping it, and bridging it right where you are.