Stop Trying To Fixing Teams. Start Coaching for Meaning
In this solo episode, host Ben Maynard explores a shift in thinking that many coaches and leaders need to make: moving away from trying to fix teams and instead focusing on coaching for meaning. If you're involved in organisational change—whether as a product leader, agile coach, or transformation lead—this episode offers practical insight into why team-level improvements often fall short.
Using the story of Jack Phillips, the Titanic's senior radio operator, Ben reflects on what it means to act with purpose during moments of change. He draws a parallel to the challenges many organisations face today—where activity can mask the absence of genuine progress.
Ben shares three practical ways to reframe your approach to coaching and leading, helping you connect the day-to-day work of teams with a broader, more meaningful narrative that supports long-term impact.
🧠 What You’ll Learn
Why team-level coaching doesn’t always lead to meaningful outcomesHow to work with leaders to define and communicate purposeWhat to listen for when transformation feels stuck or misalignedThe risks of focusing on output over organisational clarityThree practices for helping people reconnect with why their work matters💥 Key Takeaways
“Fixing a team is like fixing a leaking tap on the Titanic.”Meaning Drives EngagementClarity Before Change🎯 Who This Is For
Agile and product coaches looking to expand their impact beyond teamsLeaders seeking to create more coherence across strategy and deliveryTransformation leads working to align change efforts with real business valueProduct professionals who want to anchor work in something more than backlog itemsHost Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
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Ben Maynard
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/
Product Agility Podcast
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💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/
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Product Agility
Less Method. More Meaning.
The world of Product Discovery and Creation is becoming increasingly challenging due to mistakes and missed opportunities that are prevalent in agile teams, large-scale Scrum and all other agile frameworks. History has shown that when organisations try and scale their product development to more than one cross-functional team, mistakes are made that cut short many chances of getting all possible benefits.
The route of this for many is the need for more attention paid to the incredible advancements in Product Management driven by hordes of professional Product People who prove that making their customers happier is not a pipe dream but a hard and fast reality.
This podcast exists to explore all topics related to Product and Agility and Coaching.
How do you marry the agile principles with Product discovery?
Is it really possible to have hundreds of cross-functional teams (or Product Teams) all working from an effectively prioritised single Product Backlog and a dedicated Product Owner?
How can you embrace continuous improvement and empirical process control for your product, people and processes?
Ever wondered how to overcome the problems people face when trying to scale the Product Owner role and how it relates to Product Management and Product Teams?
Baffled by how to define a product in such a way that enables Feature Teams (aka Product Teams) and why doing wrong means you will only ever be stuck with technical teams?
Scrum Teams are not compatible with modern product management techniques.
Want to know what Product Focus means and how the right focus makes creating a shippable product less painful?
Need to get your head around how to blend modern product management techniques with Sprint Planning and Sprint Reviews to achieve Product Increments that cover the entire product?
This podcast's original focus was on Scaling Scrum vs Single-Team Scrum and how organisations can reap the benefits of Scrum when working on a larger product but still keeping a single product backlog. We found many Product People liked what we said, and then the penny dropped. This isn't a podcast about scaling Scrum or the limitations of single-team Scrum.
This podcast is for Product People & agile advocates who coach or get their hands dirty with Product creation.
We promise there is no Taboo topic that we will not explore on your behalf.
We aim to transcend the conversations about a single team, Daily Scrums, Scrum Masters and the double-diamond and bring everyone together into responsible teams dedicated to working on the entire product to make their customers happier and their lives more fulfilling.
Come and join us on our improvement towards perfection, and give us your feedback (we have a strong customer focus, too), and who knows, perhaps we will discover the magic wand that we can wave over all the broken agile and sudo-products to create a more resilient and adaptable future by bringing the worlds of Product, Agility and coaching together.
This podcast has the conversations and insights you need.
Where can you listen?
