13th June 2021 by Steve Holyer

Agile Ambulance

What was Agile Ambulance?

Agile Ambulance was the first venture that Steve Holyer and Deborah Hartmann Preuss (the founders of Coaching Cocktails as you know it today) launched together—with some early input and collaboration from Christina Neidhardt.

Our vision was a world of software development where work is done by teams who focus on what matters.

Our mission and our service was to bring great coaching and facilitation to companies quickly in the form of our effective workshops and courses.

We'd come in, design our alliance with you, hold space for you, and then go out. While we were there, we'd work with you on purpose, alignment, and context. We were there learning better ways of developing software—by doing it with you for a very short time.

In 2014, we launched the #LiftingOff 14 group to promote the practice of Agile Chartering so that so that work teams around the world focus on what matters so that they get it done.

What's in a name?

Names have meaning.

When we created Agile Ambulance our goal was to offer quick events that helped teams. We would work with internal leaders coaches and teams. As external facilitators we would facilitate one or two workshops or meetings (like a LiftOff, a course or an Open Space Event using OST) inviting everyone to come together around a big question or idea.

For us the ambulance meant we could respond quickly and we didn't intend to become part of the furniture. We didn't want teams to grow co-dependant on us. We intended to hold space for you to cultivate new capabilities and then leave the work to the strong teams closest to the work.

We had our own picture of an ambulance in mind (which you can see at the top of this page). We really didn't even think much about actual ambulances. And of coursse actual ambulances respond to medical emergencies to treat the sick and dying.

A name like Agile Ambulance puts a a focus on emergency treatment for unwell teams. That wasn't us at all. We never wanted to suggest that teams are unwell and in need of external first-responders to rescue them. But of course the name clearly suggested that. Once we realised that—we couldn't un-realise that.

That's one reason we closed Agile Ambulance.

So What? Now What?

We closed Agile Ambulance in early 2015. A few months later we were eager to create world-wide community and work with remote change-makers, so we worked together to bring another project — Coaching Cocktails — back to life.

Sometimes we hold on to things for a long time. Even longer than we need to. Domain names and server space is cheap. We just left the old Agile Ambulance page online because we could. It was there to serve content someone needed.

These days we are unhappy using the word Ambulance and even the word Agile.

So today we're expressing gratitude to Agile Ambulance and the domain name, and we're letting let it go when our year expires in July.

We've moved the LiftOff and #LiftingOff content to this Coaching Cocktails site.

We always invite you to call us for workshops and remote team events that are alive. We are still eager to work with you and may involve new partners and facilitators as we grow. We'll help you hold your LiftOff your Open Space or your Agile Coach Camp to gather your team around a big urgent question, but we won't be coming in the Agile Ambulance.

- invites and other news -

Signup for our newsletter, and we’ll tell you about upcoming events and other news.