People make businesses agile

Organizational agility has been very closely associated with 'Agile'. As a way of working, Agile, can be extremely prescriptive, even rigid in its adherence to Agile principles. Agility, on the other hand, is all about flexibility.

Agility and 'Agile' can be mutually reinforcing. However, organizational agility is, first and foremost, a holistic and flexible way of thinking about organization design and development, not a rigid methodology.

The first challenge is to ensure that everyone understands what agility means in practice, in their own context.

Agility is the collective capacity to change. It helps people to respond to market opportunities, to deal productively with complexity, at scale, and at speed when necessary. It doesn't mean moving fast all the time.

Amongst other characteristics, leaders of agile organizations exhibit discipline, direction, decisiveness, and focus, as well as the ability to listen, to engage in dialogue, to learn from experience and to experiment.

Agility is not about randomly implementing thousands of initiatives or moving in lots of different directions all at once like headless chickens. It is not about letting go of the need for any planning. It is not about forcing people to burn themselves out working on millions of ill defined projects and an endless list of 'priorities', within ill-defined roles.

Unfortunately these are some of the things that people I meet experience, when senior leaders tell them they need to be more agile. Agility is also not about avoiding decisive behaviour in the name of keeping your options forever open.

From a leadership point of view as A.G. Laffley, the one time CEO of Procter & Gamble, spells out in 'Playing to Win', agility is about making choices and enabling people to 'flow to the work'. This could mean that once a certain direction of travel has been chosen, perhaps to respond to a specific challenge, the best thing for leaders to do is to get out of the way so that teams can self-organize. Leaders should still be available to support teams, provide resource, remove obstacles, and remain close enough to the facts to guide people, and be accountable for difficult trade-offs.

Agility requires people at all levels to think about change not just as part of their job, or an add-on to their 'day job', but a central focus of their job. In an agile organization, people at all levels behave in ways which reinforce change. When trying to build an agile business it makes sense to start with leadership agility. This is an approach to leading people which requires the effective 'use of self'. This is about dealing with people and situations in a balanced way, making use of all of one's faculties. This goes beyond IQ and even EQ, although it draws on both.

The framework I have developed for organizational agility also addresses culture, structure, and careers. To ensure that a whole business is behaving in an agile way, it is vital to align leadership, culture, structure, and career development to an agile way of working.

Agility is for everyone, not just for technologists, or IT functions. It is essential to communicate the benefits of agility to the whole organization, and to be able to demonstrate these benefits in every aspect of how a business is run. For a start, an agile organization is more likely to deal with disruptions in productive ways, and be a disruptor in its own right.

Agility also enables businesses to exploit opportunities faster than competitors, attract and retain the right talent, and provide innovative, exceptional products and services to its clients or customers.

The first step towards greater agility is to ensure that leaders and managers understand what it is. Managers need to know what it means for them in practical terms to work in an agile way. At its heart, agility is a state of mind and an approach to building change-ready teams.

There are plenty of companies who offer very complex agile training and agile methodologies, which people can be certified to use. However, many organizations forget that the foundation of agility is not just mass certifications or complicated management tools. The real foundation is how people think, and act, when it comes to dealing with the challenging dilemmas that come up when driving transformational change. This foundation is psychological.

Agility requires a human understanding of how change really happens in organizations. Before you invest millions of dollars in mass-certifications or complex methodologies or costly technology-driven transformation efforts, take the time to take a step back. Reflect on what agility really means to you in ordinary human terms. Ground transformation efforts in your organization's human realities.

Take the time to define what agility means to the business, and to leaders in the organization, in a personal sense. Then communicate that to people in simple ways, using language, and stories, which are anchored in your own business.

CUSTOMIZABLE WORKSHOPS:

BUILDING THE AGILE ORGANIZATION - HOW PEOPLE MAKE ORGANIZATIONS AGILE

For senior leaders, HR practitioners, talent specialists, and internal change agents. This is a combination of all four topics listed below and provides executives with insights into the whole domain of business agility, through the lens of human behaviour.

Targeted business outcomes: better, more sustained results from digitalization and transformation efforts; more effective execution of strategy; improved organizational effectiveness, streamlined decision making; enhanced ‘intrapreneurship’, creativity, innovation & sustainability; a psychological foundation for better diversity and inclusion.

-        Create a sound basis for business and organizational transformation, or a pivot in

strategy.

-        Create value and sustained improvements in performance.

-        Demonstrate speed of response during crises and ambiguous situations.

-        Make agility part of the corporate DNA, and a source of sustained competitive

advantage.

-       Think about your approach to leadership, culture, organization and team structure,

and career management.