“It is not enough to do your best. You must know what to do, then you do your best”.
– W. Edward Deming
Business Agility is a term that is used to mean many things. Its true definition is the ability to respond quickly and easily to change being also flexible to continuously changing customer’s needs, challenges, and requirements. Its main focus should be maximizing the delivery of value to customers in increasingly turbulent business environments. It is about adapting, improving, and innovating quickly enough to stay ahead of a constantly changing curve. It is a singular capability that increasingly separates the most successful organizations of the planet from the rest of the world. When organizations perform great this capability, it looks effortless. The rapid evolution, disruption, and continuous reinvention take place with the easy grace of cheetah twisting and turning on the plains of Africa.
To be successful, many organizations think about achieving business agility by replicating what others are doing in terms of tools, processes, and frameworks. But only a few understand that merely adopting these ways of working is like installing an app designed for Android on an iPhone powered by iOS. It goes beyond, and the heart of success resides in the culture of the company, that will allow the creation of the underlying operating system for business agility. In short, it is about creating the right environment for the agile tools and techniques to stand a chance of working effectively, and in doing so, building organizations that are designed to thrive in an uncertain world.
When talking about business or organizational agility, there are a couple of thoughts to keep in mind:
- The world is currently more complex, more interconnected, more turbulent, and therefore less predictable than at any point in our history. To survive and thrive in such an environment, an organization’s ability to adapt quickly, easily, and cost-effective becomes its competitive advantage. Most struggle to know where to begin on this front.
- When it comes to work, large numbers of people feel disempowered, frustrated, and bored. They are unable to make the most of their potential because when it comes to contributing ideas, tapping into their creativity, and truly revealing their passion for what they do, they are stifled. Helping to shape environments where people not only work more effectively but also enjoy what they do is incredibly satisfying.
An agile organization is not about using Agile or Scrum in project management, the days of agility being confined to IT are long gone. Nowadays, it is about creating an organization that delight customers and deliver value to customers with great products and services, truly people-centric organizations in which people love to do what they do, where they can bring all their capabilities and in which they can realize their potential every day.
We need to reinvent organizations so that they can be effective in a very different business environment.
There is not a book. With such diversity in business goals, cultures, capabilities, and strategies, there can be no recipe that is universally applicable. Those who claim to have such a recipe clearly misunderstand the complex and contextual nature of organizational change.
Every organization is different, and each will have its own route to agility and high performance. What is important is that we tackle all the areas that are crucial to creating an environment in which any chosen approach can work.
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Dogma C3X is an Intelligent Business Consulting Platform inspired by the 3Cs industry model, which offers a strategic look at the pillars that every company needs for success: Customers – Company – Competitors. “Intelligent” because by using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) it can collect, process, and analyze the growing tsunami of data (structured and unstructured) related to the 3Cs, which is incredibly valuable. Only by strengthening, positioning, and integrating these three pillars (Customers – Company – Competitors) you will be able to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
