The Age of Agility is upon us. Those not recognizing this reality are at great risk of “accelerated obsolescence”. We call this The Agile Imperative and it also defines the approach we take in helping our clients develop and build capability with their leaders, teams and overall organizations. It begins with the adoption of a core belief system followed by a progressive process building clarity, speed and adaptability as an on-going competitive advantage.
AGILITY CORE BELIEF SYSTEM
- The world will continue to move faster and get more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) in the future – a lot more.
- Agility is not just to do. It is imperative for survival and a competitive advantage opportunity in a VUCA world.
- Your people are the highest priority. They are the basis of your adaptability and the key to customer satisfaction. Providing them the opportunity to grow and develop is paramount.
- The members of your organization must all share a mindset of commitment to being focused, fast, and flexible, fueled by achieving excellence in the five drivers of The Agile Model®.
- The agile culture elements are vital to success: caring, connecting, challenging, curious, and creating.
- The operating principles that help shape organizational agility include simplicity, speed, synchronicity, fluidity, modularity, and scalability.
THE AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS™
- Establishing and acknowledging compelling need and drive for becoming more agile.
- Develops the agility implementation scope and mission statement and initiates team development process.
Critical Questions: - What is the compelling need and burning platform for agility in YOUR organization?
- Does everyone on your ownership and senior leadership team see the same need and feel the same sense of urgency and buy-in to Agile Core Beliefs?
- Have you identified the right mix of internal and external resources capable of guiding and championing the efforts?
- Analyzes the current situation and defines the business case, purpose and nature of the transformation to agility.
- Articulating vision of strategic objectives, stakeholders, values and edge by building the strategy map.
Critical Questions: - What are the conclusions and implications from the Agility Audit™ with regard to the agile capabilities of your people, processes and technology?
- After framing your strategic intent into a Strategy Map summary, what are the strategic priorities and improvement needs for your focus, speed and flexibility?
- What are the goals and outcomes you expect from building greater organizational agility? By when?
- Conducting the Agile Analytics and Audit to determine your gaps and priorities for how to move from your current to desired state of agility.
- Articulates and defines the entire process required to establish agility aligned across people, process and technology.
Critical Questions: - What are the mission critical gaps and priorities for your agility improvement process?
- How can your plan for deployment demonstrate the commitment of senior leaders and influencers?
- How to include highly visible key metrics for improving the mission critical gaps and plan for each unit to define their own mission critical gaps and priorities?
- Builds understanding and commitment to agility, trains staff towards the new goals or outcomes and establishes new ways of working as individuals and in teams.
- Introduce the strategic focusing system for cascading strategy maps.
- Establish and implement key agility indicators and dashboards for measuring and tracking traction and success.
Critical Questions:
- How will you align and connect your strategic focusing process as integral aspect of agility development to keep agility efforts focused on mission critical areas of need and return.
- How to build a dashboard to assess and track “success” in deployment of the agile development process.
- Supports cultural change and empowerment of the workforce and builds in measurement processes to assess progress of agility implementation and the learning which has occurred.
- Involves on-going quarterly strategic review and assessment to get traction on the mission critical initiatives.
- On-going talent management and leadership development using the LAP™ 360.
Critical Questions: - How have you been able to link the focus on agility development with performance feedback and rewards systems within your company?
- Does your talent review and promotion practice consider leadership agility competency areas?
- Are you able to establish annual or bi-annual Agility Audit™ benchmarking to monitor and track progress and on-going areas needing attention?