Until COVID became a prominent reality, business agility was just another business goal.
The pandemic made two things very clear!
1) Rapid business changes are possible
2) Companies that could rapidly adapt their processes fared much better than those that didn't.
Business agility is now a mission-critical capability and one that leaders must prioritize if they want their organizations to survive and thrive. Business agility is the sunlight that magically removes the mist of Bureaucracy.
There are many definitions of business agility, but at its core, it is the ability to re-think and re-plan with known and unknown challenges and opportunities and steer the organization forward without letting Bureaucracy come into the way.
Companies should recognize that this is not a one-time thing to exhibit during the crisis but to build this muscle by changing the core culture and new way of thinking and executing. This is an everyday need to thrive in the new world.
Here's what my experiences have taught me:
👉 Start with mindset change at the leadership level, build the culture of absorbing new information, and act on it to shift direction if required. Processes and structures need to be more fluid than rigid. Employees need psychological safety to make the right decisions at the right time and highlight what is not working in serving their internal or external customers.
👉 It boils down to knowing how to accomplish things as a whole group (team of teams). It's about having access to the information you need and the capacity to conduct what-if analysis without the constraints of department-level silos. It's no longer enough to do a task watching the clock; it's now all about outcomes and adding value.
👉 Create a climate where teams may collaborate, re-think, and re-plan to improve things. They should be able to take up challenges such as why it takes 6 weeks to process claims when start-ups can do this near real-time? Why does it take a long, nine to 12 hours, after the doctor authorizes discharging the patient? They need to have compelling goal and this obsession to improve is the central theme that drives these teams.
👉 Companies need to move from a project-based mindset to an experiment-based perspective. The ability of a company to conduct fast experiments, learn from them, and scale the successful experiments is required in this new VUCA world. We need to transform managers who are great at managing time and resources to Leaders whose job is to understand the big picture, remove roadblocks, provide air cover, and foster innovation.
These are not easy things to do. It requires a different mindset, culture, and set of skills. This is a journey.
But the rewards are well worth it. It's time for leaders to step up and embrace business agility as a critical priority for their organizations.
Are you ready to take on the agile journey to success?
Comments