Why Viability Overrides Agility

“I want to have a cockroach business.” 🪳🪳🪳

The agility versus viability comparison exposes a critical blind spot: agile methods optimize for short-term value, not long-term survival.

I’m having fascinating conversations this week with solopreneurs, founders, intrapreneurs and other lone managers to better understand their concerns in the age of AI. And there was one thing Peter Bell told me that blew me away.

“I want to have a cockroach business. The kind that’s going to survive any nuclear winters that may come up.”

A cockroach business! 🪳🪳🪳

Surviving and thriving, no matter what happens.

Yes, it’s become a tired cliché to say that the future of work has never looked so uncertain. I mean, just look at the rate of innovation in the world of AI and you see that technostress and FOBO (Fear Of Becoming Obsolete) are consuming anyone trying to keep their business running.

Just when you’re deciding between Claude Code and Google Antigravity, suddenly Claude Cowork is dominating the conversation. But you barely have time to watch YouTube videos about it because Clawd Bot has already conquered the memespace. For now. Probably until next week. Because, guaranteed, there will be yet another AI technology making waves.

We can safely say that agility, speed of innovation, and “responding to change” have become inescapable in 2026. It’s suffocating us.

So what now?

I believe I have the answer.

From Agility to Viability

I’ve written before that agile methods and frameworks have a dangerous blind spot. They optimize for the present, not the future. They shorten feedback cycles and accelerate the rate of value delivered to customers. Great. But the widespread adoption of AI technologies has revealed that when you replace junior workers with large language models, you can move faster, at lower costs, and deliver more value to stakeholders. Better, faster, cheaper! The fantasy of every lean and agile consultant. Who doesn’t want that?

But disrupting the careers of junior workers, and by extension, your future talent funnel, is not in the interest of the company. It’s a short-term gain masking a long-term loss. And no agile framework truly addresses this risk.

It’s a short-term gain masking a long-term loss.

Or consider the vibe coding tools that are dominating the discourse these days. Claude Code, Codex, Lovable, Cursor, Replit, Bolt, Base44, you name it. There’s no end to the list of platforms that enable you to generate a tsunami of code in no time, with tireless AI agents that plan, check, and verify the prototype apps and websites they produce in just minutes. It’s agility on steroids!

But what about Sturgeon’s Law, which says that 90% of everything is crap? In the case of vibe-coded software architectures, this percentage is probably conservative. Who is going to fix and maintain all that garbage in the future?

The most critical blind spot of agility is perhaps the question, “When should we not be agile? When do we choose not to respond to change?” The constant technostress and fear of becoming irrelevant is burning through our time and mindspace. Simply trying to keep up in the world of AI can drive the average professional insane. Not every signal in the environment deserves processing. Not everything deserves a response.

There is value in not being an explorer or pioneer. Sometimes, it’s perfectly fine to wait strategically until the dust has settled and we migrate to a new technological terrain later. The term agility captures our need to respond, but it doesn’t capture our need to ignore.

But the word viability does.

Here’s what Perplexity says about the difference:

Agility is about how quickly and effectively a system can change; viability is about whether that system can continue to exist as a coherent entity over time.

• Agility: The ability of an organization to rapidly adapt its strategies, structures, and operations in response to changes in its environment, customers, or technology, while staying productive and competitive.

• Viability: The ability of a system or business to survive and sustain itself over the long term, preserving its identity while remaining financially and operationally sound in a changing environment.

Key differences between Agility and Viability

• Focus:

  • Agility focuses on speed, flexibility, and responsiveness to change in the short-to-medium term.

  • Viability focuses on continued existence, resilience, and long-term sustainability (including financial, structural, and ecological aspects).

• Time horizon:

  • Agility emphasizes near-term adaptation and iterative change.

  • Viability emphasizes endurance across many adaptations and shocks.

• Scope:

  • Agility is usually discussed at the level of ways of working, organizational design, and decision-making practices.