Lately, a familiar pattern keeps showing up across our strategy sessions, facilitation workshops and founder conversations.
They’re not short on ideas. Or lacking motivation and they’re certainly not afraid of hard work. What they are struggling with is knowing how to move forward when everything feels important all at once.
Starting, maintaining, and growing a business takes patience, courage, and a clear vision. Most founders we work with certainly have that vision, not just for their business, but for the life they want to build alongside it. Yet, what’s often missing is a way to translate that vision into practical, achievable steps without burning out, or locking themselves into plans that no longer fit six months down the track.
This is often where the conversation naturally turns to Agile. Not as a framework, but as a way of thinking and approaching the work.
Agile, as we see it in the real world
There’s no shortage of language attached to Agile. Sprints. Backlogs. Retrospectives. A framework continuously stacked with more tools. Many of these methodologies were designed for complex organisational environments.
Yet stripped right back, Agile isn’t about tools or terminology.
It’s about flexibility with intention.
It’s about recognising that conditions change, information evolves, and collaborating with the right people can deliver value earlier and more honestly than rigid planning ever could.
In founder-led businesses, especially early-stage or solo operations, this flexibility isn’t a weakness. It’s often their greatest strength. Larger organisations spend months trying to manufacture agility. Yet founders live it every day.
“Most founders don’t need more ideas. They need a way to decide what matters now and most importantly what can wait.” – Siobhain, TMF
Where Agile shows up for founders
We see Agile thinking surface most clearly when founders hit moments like:
- Feeling overwhelmed by competing priorities
- Unsure where to invest limited time or money
- Questioning whether something isn’t working or just needs more time
- Trying to grow without losing the essence of why they started
In these moments, long-range and rigid planning often adds pressure rather than relief.
Through our work facilitating strategic direction for businesses, we’ve found Agile offers a different entry point: shorter planning cycles, clearer focus, and regular reflection. For many solo founders, reflection is personal and sometimes uncomfortable, but it’s also where a clear path forward begins.
Instead of asking “What should the next year look like?”, the questions shift to:
- What’s the most valuable thing to work on right now?
- What do we need to learn before committing further?
- What would make the next 30 - 60 days feel successful?
The role of Facilitation
This is where the work of Facilita and The Mindful Facilitator aligns so naturally and supports businesses in their strategic direction.
Agile doesn’t succeed simply because a method is adopted. It succeeds when people are aligned to the vision, decisions are visible, but most importantly when conversations are held well in environments that feel safe and open enough for honesty.
Facilita brings strong facilitation into Agile environments, helping teams and founders’ slow things down just enough to:
- Get clear on outcomes
- Surface assumptions
- Make decisions that stick
“Agile only works when people are aligned around clear outcomes. Otherwise, speed just creates more noise.”
- Susanna, Facilita
In founder settings, this kind of facilitation can be the difference between constant motion and meaningful progress.
Feedback, without the drama
This is where reflection becomes practical. Another Agile practice we regularly adapt and encourage with founders is continual feedback, or what Agile refers to as retrospectives.
In practice, this doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s simply asking:
- Did this work?
- If not, why not?
- Do we pivot, pause, or let it evolve a little longer?
This removes much of the emotional charge from decision - making. Especially as a founder. Learning becomes part of the process, rather than something that only happens when things “fail”. When we develop strategic roadmaps with clients, developing this mindset helps ensure progress is not just measurable, but realistic within the context of an early or growing business.
What Agile looks like in practice (without overengineering it)
At a practical level, Agile often looks like:
- A clear but flexible vision
- A short, prioritised list of what matters most right now
- Working in small increments rather than all-or-nothing launches
- Regular check-ins to adjust direction based on real feedback
- Ongoing refinement of how you work not just what you work on
For founders, this approach creates momentum without locking them into decisions made with incomplete information.
Agile works because it reflects the reality of modern business. Founders understand that conditions change, information evolves and priorities shift. Without this perspective, they and their business become stale.
When applied thoughtfully, Agile allows founders and teams to adapt without losing momentum or themselves in the process. It becomes less about moving faster, and more about moving with awareness.
Perhaps most importantly, it gives founders permission to build without needing to have it all figured out first.
Come work with us!
This is the work we do together.
Between us, we bring deep experience across complex, regulated environments from energy, resources, and infrastructure to technology, transformation, and founder-led businesses. Our work is shaped by years spent inside organisations where alignment and good decision making genuinely matter.
Siobhain Howe, founder of The Mindful Facilitator, brings a strong strategy lens grounded in hands-on experience across HR, technology, transformation, and startup environments. Her work spans product and business design, digital strategy, and founder coaching, with a practical focus on systems, implementation, and ways of working that hold up in real life.
Susanna Durston, founder of Facilita Consulting, brings over two decades of experience in strategy, project delivery, and change across the energy and resources sector. Her facilitation work is known for creating inclusive, high-trust spaces where leaders and teams can navigate complexity, align priorities, and move ideas into action.
Together, we design and facilitate workshops that cut through noise, surface what truly matters, and translate vision into clear, achievable next steps blending strategic clarity, inclusive facilitation, and practical execution.
If you’re considering a facilitation workshop, strategy reset, or team alignment session, we’d welcome a conversation about what would be most useful for your organisation right now.
