Thirty executives, average tenure over 30 years — when I said that sentence out loud in North Farm’s classroom, the room froze for a second, then broke into laughter. Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co., a company that has carried Taipei City’s entire produce supply for more than half a century, saw its General Manager, Wu Fang-Ming, do something most companies wouldn’t dare this year: first bring three section chiefs into a CSM classroom, then two months later send all 30 senior executives into that same room. The tenure of this group of executives was supposed to be North Farm’s deepest asset — instead, Wu Fang-Ming laid it out himself in the classroom and treated it as the biggest homework assignment of all. This isn’t just a certification course. It’s a 52-year-old company choosing to operate on its own most senior people first.
A 52-Year-Old Company Whose Deepest Asset Is Also Its Deepest Frame
Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co. was founded in 1974, and this year marks its 52nd year. That pedigree has always been North Farm’s calling card — an established name that knows the market and can carry the weight of supplying produce to all of Taipei City.
But on August 5 and 6, the 30 senior executives who sat down in that classroom had an average tenure of over 30 years. In other words, most of them joined North Farm when the company already had two or three decades of history behind it — and then spent another thirty years walking alongside it.
Deep tenure means knowing the market, knowing the relationships, knowing what this market is doing at three in the morning. That’s not a bad thing — honestly, it’s exactly why North Farm has been able to hold Taipei’s produce supply together so steadily. But that same tenure can quietly turn into an unspoken sentence: “I’ve worked here for 30 years. I know how this should be done.”
That sentence is the thing North Farm actually needs to loosen.
In June, the GM Brought 3 Section Chiefs Into the Classroom. In August, He Brought In 30 Executives.
On June 13 and 14 this year, GM Wu Fang-Ming did something first: he enrolled himself in the two-day official CSM (Certified ScrumMaster®) certification course, bringing along three section chiefs — Hsu Chih-Mo, Lin Che-Hsu, and Chen Kuan-Lin (acting). He didn’t send someone else to scope it out first. He gave up two days himself, first.
Wu previously served as Deputy County Magistrate, holding a civil-service rank near the top of the system — theoretically, he had nothing left to prove by sitting through a two-day course. But he personally brought three of his officers to attend. That was movement one.
Two months later, on August 5 and 6, he scaled it up by an order of magnitude: all 30 of the company’s senior executives enrolled in the same two-day CSM class. This time he wasn’t sending representatives — he sat through both full days himself, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
“North Farm’s Average Tenure Is Over 30” — That Sentence Pinned the Whole Room
On the second afternoon, I asked the whole class a question: “As North Farm people, what’s our average tenure?”
Someone in the room froze for a second: “30 years? You mean average age, right?”
“Average tenure.”
“30? Then everyone here must be in their sixties.” The whole room laughed.
I didn’t. Because that was exactly the effect I wanted. I told them: we’re all held hostage by some kind of frame — “that’s just how we’ve always done it at North Farm” is one frame, and Scrum has its own frame too. But don’t Scrum for the sake of Scrum. Scrum to achieve a purpose, Scrum to create value.
A group of executives with an average tenure of 30 years is best at knowing “we’ve always handled this a certain way.” That instinct is exactly what lets them run the market fast and steady. But that same instinct can also kill a good idea before it’s even finished being said — “won’t work, we’ve tried that.”
What the two-day CSM class needed to loosen was never their expertise. It was the timing of that instinct.
Two Days Weren’t About Listening. They Were About Building an App Pitch Worth Investing In.
I didn’t let them just sit and listen for two days. In the afternoons, they split into five teams, each choosing a real North Farm pain point — procurement cost, auction revenue, retention, cross-department coordination — and used the Scrum way to build, within two days, an app proposal ready to “pitch for funding.”
Wu Fang-Ming put himself in the game too. One team wrote him into their user story as the lead character: “As North Farm’s Deputy General Manager joining a video meeting from home, I want an automatic AI meeting summary, because I want to be able to make a fast decision before the meeting ends.” During another team’s pitch, he grinned and upped the ante on the spot: “Alright, I’m investing NT$20 million.” The whole room erupted — this wasn’t a GM doing an inspection. This was a GM playing investor, playing for real, alongside his own executives.
In the end, the five teams voted on each other, and Team 3 won “Best Team” with 1,700 votes. At the award ceremony, Wu Fang-Ming personally walked up on stage, took a photo with the winning team, and the two of them held a banner reading “Taipei Agricultural Products CSM Certification Training Program” — grinning wider than anyone else in the room.
Certification Was Never the Point. Loosening “I’ve Done This for 30 Years” Was.
Whether the same frame is still there once everyone’s back at their desks — that’s the real thing these two days need to be graded on. 30 CSM certificates will get issued over the coming weeks, but that’s just a souvenir.
Hsieh O-Hua, Manager of the Administration Department, wrote after the course: “Agile isn’t something you fully grasp in a two-day course — it’s a working culture that requires ongoing practice and reflection.” Ting O-Ching, Deputy Manager of the Sales Department, said the course made him rethink daily stand-ups: “It’s not just reporting progress — it’s a critical mechanism for helping the team catch problems early and build shared understanding.”
These aren’t things they said for my benefit. These are 30 executives testing themselves: once they’re back in their own departments, will they actually use words like “stand-up,” “retrospective,” and “shared language” in daily work — or will these two days get filed away as a memory, waiting for the next moment someone reflexively says “I’ve done this for 30 years”?
A certificate can’t decide that. What decides it is the next three months of biweekly Scrum Buddy coaching.
From a Bullet Point in a Proposal to the Award Stage
This past May, Hongsheng Consulting wrote a single line into a proposal: CSM certification counts as one qualifying criterion for the “Global Top Agile CEO Award.” Every year, this award selects a group of CEOs worldwide who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in agile thinking and practice.
Later this month, on August 15, Wu Fang-Ming’s name will appear on the winners list for the 2026 4th edition of the award.
I’ve coached companies for years, and I’ve seen plenty of proposals dress up a “qualifying criterion” beautifully — and then nobody ever actually delivers on it. Wu Fang-Ming didn’t treat it as a PR line. He lived up to the standard first. The award is just proof that happened to pass by.
From 3 People in June to 30 in August — What’s Next?
In June, the GM led 3 section chiefs to carve out the first stretch of the road for North Farm. In August, 30 senior executives walked into the same classroom together and widened it.
North Farm’s challenge was never a shortage of systems. It’s whether this 52-year-old company — as cross-department work keeps increasing — can get its most senior executives, the ones most likely to be held hostage by their own tenure, to loosen their grip first: to trade “I’ve done this for 30 years” for “let’s take a look together — can we find a better way this time?”
Wu Fang-Ming chose to sit down himself, twice. That choice, on its own, already is the decision. Whether a company changes is rarely about what’s written in its policy manual. It’s about whether its General Manager is willing to be the first one to raise his hand.
Whether the next step is 60 people or the whole company, I don’t know yet. But if you’re leading a group of executives who’ve “been in this business for over 20 years” and you’re wrestling with the same question — how do you turn their seniority back into an advantage instead of a ceiling — come ask me. I run CSM and CSPO cohorts every month, and I coach organizations through it myself. Let’s find out where your organization is ready to loosen its grip first.
What the Executives Said, In Their Own Words
Beyond the certificates and the numbers, I want you to see what these 30 executives wrote in their own words once they were back at their desks.
Ting O-Ching / Deputy Manager, Sales Department
“The biggest takeaway wasn’t just learning new tools or methods — it was building a mindset of continuous improvement and the courage to change.”
Lee O-Lin / Director, Audit Office
“What stuck with me most was the test — the questions couldn’t be answered from memory alone. You had to actually understand the concepts and apply them flexibly.”
Wang O-Chung / Auditor, Secretariat
“The core of Scrum was never about passing a test. It was about how you apply these ideas to real work.”
Chen O-Chih / Specialist, Secretariat
“The team already had a lot of agile instincts — the moment a new task comes in, people divide the work quickly and pull together, with real collaborative efficiency.”
Tu O-Chi / Director, No. 1 Market Reconstruction Office
“Scrum was built for software development, but it fits just as well into requirements analysis, planning and design, and cross-department collaboration.”
Hsieh O-Hua / Manager, Administration Department
“This was a field I’d never touched before — equal parts excited and nervous. But with the instructor’s step-by-step guidance, what started as an abstract idea became something I could actually grasp.”
