We agilists, we love our sticky notes, don’t we? Retrospectives, sprints, Kanban boards – they just wouldn’t be the same without that satisfying peel and slap of a fresh Post-it. But did you know the whole Post-it empire started as a glorious failure?
Here’s the thing: some dude at 3M back in the ’60s was trying to make a super-strong aerospace adhesive. Oops, wrong formula! Instead, he got a weak, kinda reusable glue. Project fail, right?
Wrong.
See, this is where agile thinking comes in, even if they didn’t call it that back then. Years later, another 3M guy sings in a church choir, gets super annoyed at his bookmarks falling out, and has a lightbulb moment. That “failed” glue? Perfect for keeping his place without ripping those delicate hymnbook pages.
Iteration, my friends! Not every idea is the final product. Sometimes, the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the happy accident, just waiting for someone to find its real-world problem to solve. The rest, well, it’s sticky note history.
Agile Lessons from a Sticky Note:
- Don’t fear the “fail”: Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from the stuff that didn’t go to plan.
- Pivot like a pro: Be open to unexpected uses for your work. What seemed like a dud might just need a different perspective.
- It’s all about the user: The Post-it Note wasn’t some grand vision, it was a solution to a real, everyday annoyance. Keep your user’s pain points at the forefront.
So next time you’re brainstorming, and some wacky idea lands with a splat instead of a bang, don’t toss it out. Might just be the seed of your next accidental success story!
