If we’re not agile, we’re fragile
We assume we’re all agile as SMEs, and in many cases it’s true. But Patrick Dunne argues that the concept of agility in leadership is often misunderstood
Patrick Dunne
Reading Time 9 minutes
As with many leadership words‘agility’ has many meanings and components. Yet, when used, it is often mistakenly assumed that we all have the same understanding. Whether that’s about mental, physical, verbal or other forms of agility. Unsurprisingly, for a word applied to so many contexts, we frequently don’t.
Mobilising people with different perspectives and feelings towards change is easier for all involved if we have a clear understanding of what we mean and why. It also helps to understand the inhibitors and enablers as well as the metrics that we might use for diagnosis and to track progress.
Mostly to avoid misinterpretation, but also because when I hear it used vaguely and without context my inner ‘bullometer’ starts to squeal, I try hard not to use the ‘A’ word without saying what I mean and contextualising it. Probably the result of helpful scar tissue from an early career moment where an extolling leader uttered ‘we need to be more agile’ evoking the spirit of leaping gazelles which those of us listening translated as ‘another round of cuts and even more work for us then’.
Patrick Dunne delivered a webinar for Help to Grow: Management Alumni titled If we’re not agile, we’re fragile. Watch the recording here
When agility is such a powerful and positive concept and critical to our ability to survive and thrive in disruptive and uncertain times it’s a real shame that the word is frequently misused and abused. The positivity that flows from agility can be a powerful magnet for customers, talent and investment, as well as a driver of innovation. The lack of it is often a reason why people don’t want to buy, will leave, or don’t want to invest. Organisations of all sizes and types with a ‘Maximising Mindset’ quickly adapted and found new ways of doing things as a result of the pandemic. Those that should have and could have but didn’t, floundered and failed or became zombie businesses. High agility today feels more of an imperative than an option. Put simply – If we’re not agile we’re fragile.
Sometimes there is confusion between productivity and agility. Agility has the potential to increase or decrease productivity. Savvy leaders understand the difference and, most importantly, find the sweet spot on their value curve so that if there is a productivity cost it is more than compensated for by the premium and enhanced loyalty that a better product or service deserves. There are a range of practical e-books available through SAP-Concur’s Creating Business Agility through Transformational Leadership Resource.
Increased agility can also drive or be driven by cultural change. The combination of empowering local decision making and detailed process engineering change can lead to both. An example being the rise of the ‘cobots’. Collaborative robots, that are sharing data in real time to boost flexibility, reduce defects and deal better with last-minute changes on production lines. They are simply mimicking human practice from ancient manufacturing working methods.
In their fascinating work on culture, MIT’s Sloan Glassdoor School of Management picked out 9 Big Cultural Values to measure and track an organisation’s culture. These were agility, collaboration, customer, diversity, execution, integrity, innovation, performance, and respect.
Their definition of agility being that ‘employees can respond quickly and effectively to changes in the marketplace and seize new opportunities. To be Flexible, Nimble and Fast moving.’ Fascinating that the onus was on employees and didn’t include the board, leadership, or partners. It’s hard for employees to be agile if they are constrained by their board and leadership team, or where the equipment or systems that they use or key suppliers and partners slow them down.
Customer focus, another of the ‘Big 9’, is a big driver of agility. Cassie Petrie , SAP Concur’s EMEA Managing Director for small and medium sized businesses supports this view, citing a large mobile network example where:
‘Processing a change which was taking 8 hours across 8 days was reorganised to make it all happen on one day. The result, a week off the time from the customer’s perspective.’
In Cassie’s view, ‘Greater use of customer or user experience to prioritise sequencing of tasks will increase agility and deliver better outcomes for customers as well as strengthen competitive advantage and margins.’
Interpretations of agility tend to combine speed with movement, combining a mindset, capabilities and characteristics which are used intentionally and produce a well-developed set of reflexes to help us both succeed and avoid peril. Like we have seen from winning teams in the recent Paris Olympics and Paralympics, agility as a group also depends upon trust and teamwork and moments of calm as well as dynamism.
A good friend, ballet dancer and brilliant Pilates trainer, Maria Sasaki says that to be agile you need ‘Core strength and stability, combined with suppleness of body and limbs.’ She also emphasises the importance of developing balance. Agility is not about jumping aimlessly around all over the place, enjoyable though that sensation may be. Stability and control underpin agility and provide the strength to stretch. Core strength in an organisation means strength in all aspects.
Cat lovers at work may be trying to emulate their favourite feline’s ability to land their feet, especially the ‘righting reflex’ which helps to work out which way is up when you are falling and how to reduce a moment of inertia.
For Birders, it’s the Goshawk’s clarity of purpose when flying at speed through a wood in pursuit of its prey combined with its power and suppleness may be the ultimate exemplar of agility. Its ability to process vast amounts of data at speed and make thousands of adjustments to its shape and route would be an asset in any business.
But we’re a different species. We may have many things in common with other animals, yet we have quite different individual and organisational physiques, capabilities and challenges beyond our basic needs. So, what are the inhibitors and enablers hindering or helping us to be more agile and what do we need to think about when developing metrics to help us understand how agile we are.
Inhibitors:
The many potential inhibitors to agility include:
- mindset and culture. Best typified by ‘we’ve always done it this way’ and the dangerous feelings of invincibility which may emerge following a period of success.
- rewarding a lack of agility and driving out the most agile. Agile people by their very nature will be demanding colleagues and test their boundaries.
- a lack in diversity of thought and Groupthink.
- arrogance, the judgement slayer, especially when it comes to spotting when it is time to change.
- not doing the training – failing to build the muscles, develop the control and techniques to have the strength and capabilities to adapt.
- the complexity of getting things done, usually down to poor process.
- not having the data and systems to inform swift and robust decision making. This also can be a reason for staff churn due to frustration with systems and their impact on getting things done.
- an understandable but erroneous invested capital bias which causes us to avoid a sense of abandonment and failure.
- short term distractions.
Enablers:
Thankfully, there are many enablers to agility including:
- building the right board for the next phase of development – it may be very different from before. It’s amazing how often the addition of one or two board members can catalyse an organisation, especially in the Chair role.
- the right mindset and culture: whatever your favourite attributes, defining your desired culture and placing emphasis on meaningful agility will help. A mindset which is always learning and curious to know what other organisations are doing in and outside of the sector.
- thoughtful restlessness should be valued and encouraged rather than punished. The human spirit of exploration, desire for discovery and strengths in problem solving are incredible if freed to flourish.
- strengthening our core and the suppleness of our body and limbs. This comes through practice and through stretching when you don’t need to because you won’t always know when you will need to.
- being actively open minded as well as listening actively. Not just for what you want to hear or for confirmation;.
- diversity helps to develop agility and the rise of next-gen boards which is covered in the latest book I have co-authored with Rebecca Robins Five Generations at Work: How We Win Together, for Good, which has numerous examples of how this works.
- finally, being technologically savvy and understanding the advances being made in AI, and other technological developments, should enhance the speed and reliability of decision making and reduce unjustified prevarication.
Metrics:
Metrics by definition focus on quantitative rather than qualitative measures and, in some sectors, it can be more challenging to track long-term metrics for agility, especially in volatile circumstances or where identifying attribution is hard. For this reason, many of the quantitative metrics used for agility have qualitative conditions attached to them. For example, ‘speed to recruit a new employee who stays more than a year’ or ‘time to resolve a customer complaint successfully.’
It’s exciting to think what AI might bring to the world of agility metrics and I expect we will see some interesting developments on this soon. In the meantime, there are diagnostic tools already available to assess things like how agile you are on things like controlling costs.
Commonly used agility metrics are often split by ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ agility. Obvious examples of the former being the speed to get a new product to market or gain critical mass in a new territory and the latter being time to respond to changing market conditions, regulatory changes etc.
Five points to sum up
- Clarity over the cultural change required as well as how we are going to achieve and track it underpins success.
- Agility feels more of an imperative than an option, both to thrive and to survive.
- Improving personal or collective agility relies upon ensuring that we all know what we’re talking about and approach it with a Maximising Mindset.
- Developing the power of our antennae, having the ability to process data and turn it into intelligence is essential in knowing when and how to adapt.
- High self-awareness individually and collectively informs our ambition and choices and helps us make the most of them.
Patrick Dunne delivered a webinar for Help to Grow: Management Alumni titled If we’re not agile, we’re fragile. Watch the recording here
Patrick Dunne
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