If You’re Still Solving Their Problems, You’re the Problem

Dependence is failure. Autonomy is your legacy.

Scrum Masters sometimes think: “If my teams can run at a high level without me, I’m out of a job.”

• You’re thinking too small. When teams deliver without you, you get bigger, better opportunities—not unemployment. Charles Duhigg’s Smarter Faster Better shows leaders of autonomous teams often advance faster because they’ve proven they can build lasting effectiveness.

• Stop proving, start delivering. Too many Scrum Masters focus on looking valuable instead of improving team capability. The Liberators’ work on team autonomy shows the more you enable self-organization, the more value you create.

• Ditch the artifact mindset. Many come from output-heavy roles where plans, reports, and Excel docs proved worth. Harvard Business Review warns this focus on outputs over outcomes is a major blocker to Agile success.

• Make the hard shift. Moving from controlling decisions to asking, “What do you think you should do?” feels like letting go, but MIT Sloan Management Review shows that when leaders stop solving every problem, teams build capability and ownership.

• Work yourself out of the day-to-day. If your teams rely on you for every answer, you’ll keep solving the same problems forever—and never have space for bigger challenges.

• Intervene only when it matters. Let them live with their solutions. Commitment comes from carrying the results, not just agreeing to them.

The less they need you, the better you’ve done your job.