Organisations that are intent on becoming agile businesses will likely need to limber up their organisations, both structurally and culturally. They will need to trade rigid approaches for more flexible alternatives: a component-based business model, malleable enterprise structure and governance, flexible value networks, variable work practices and a conducive culture.
Another blog that you may find interesting: “The Agile Worker is…Working.”
Here are some questions to help you pinpoint areas that may not be as agile as you need them to be.
Does your organisation:
- Respond well to the need for speed, agility, and flexibility?
- Focus on its core competencies to derive competitive advantage?
- Have an effective mechanism in place to anticipate and respond to opportunities?
- Recognise the importance of leveraging business partnerships in areas that are not your core competence?
- Have organisational arrangements, from structure to decision-making processes that support or hinder success?
- Fully engage in a partnership approach to the market, from your board of directors to your front-line staff?
- Take a leadership role in your value network of partnerships?
- Not tolerate underutilised resources?
- Balance rigour/ discipline with empowerment/ risk-taking in each of your principal business units and functions?
- Effectively develop leaders and leadership throughout the organisation?
- Have a corporate culture that supports a collaborative approach to management – inside and outside the organisation?
- Manage change effectively and systematically … or is it left to chance?
Shedding the encumbrances of rigid organisational structures and staid corporate cultures enables organisations to sense and respond quicker to the business environment that surrounds them.
Nevertheless, organisational and cultural agility doesn’t just happen. They are the result of a carefully executed strategy for organisational change.