OWP 2022: Leading For the Future

→Execution

DESIGNING AND LEADING THE AGILE ORGANIZATION

UPDATE Many business leaders have the wrong idea about business agility and struggle to see the set of concrete principles, beliefs, and values that have real-world results beyond the buzzword.

Global and domestic markets are by their nature full of permutations and, when faced with fast, radical change, they are often accompanied by fear and uncertainty. Companies frequently ignore these sentiments – but at their peril. Often, it’s the large legacy businesses that can be slow and clumsy in their responses to global, social, and digital disruptions. Sometimes they can lumber along in critical areas like digital transformation too. But with market changes and emerging opportunities happening so quickly in this digital age, companies are

increasingly challenged to respond with greater levels of entrepreneurship and adaptability. In combination, this the essence of agility. RECALIBRATE YOUR APPROACH Many executives think that agility is a buzzword, when, in fact, it’s built on a set of concrete principles, beliefs and values. Another misconception is that chaos ensues from the constant change and modifications that agility requires. On the contrary, agility is very disciplined and does not require constant change. At the organizational level,

this is about empowering frontline employees and middle management within a clear strategic frame to drive higher levels of innovation by embracing the uncertainty of the market. It’s about ending the unhelpful division between profit makers and cost centers in the organization by breaking up functions and divisional boundaries to remake new units focused on creating the right type of value for customers. Another incorrect assumption is that ‘being agile’ and ‘agility’ are the same thing. In reality, agile is a methodology and agility is a capability.

STÉPHANE JG GIROD Professor of Strategy and Organizational Innovation and Thought Leader in Business Agility at IMD

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