Our understanding of agility
Agility has become a buzz word and there are many misunderstandings about this term. So let’s first see if we understand the same thing about agility so that we are working together in the same direction.
Agility is intended to create the adaptability of a company to the ever faster changing conditions of the market. To do this, companies need a better time-to-market while at the same time increasing their quality – in terms of customer needs. This is often referred to as increasing the outcome, as opposed to simply increasing the output. Because in a turbulent market environment, you do not survive by arbitrarily and massively bringing new developments to the market. But by concentrating on what offers real benefits to your customers.
To achieve these goals, we have to turn many things upside down and think differently:
How do we divide power?
Away from top-down and centralisation towards self-organisation, distributed leadership and trust, but also commitment and mindfulness with oneself and in dealing with others are necessary to gain speed and bring this to life.
What do we put at the centre of what we do?
In order to be able to concentrate on the essentials, I have to think outside-in on the one hand and on the other hand put the employee in the centre and leave out all processes that prevent her from concentrating on the customer.
How do we manage the company?
Away from fragmentation, mainly promoting expertise, economy of scale, direct control of individuals, towards a holistic view of value creation processes, team and network thinking, cross-functionality, end-to-end thinking and respect for the different types and views of people, prioritisation and focus at all levels.
How do we deal with learning processes?
Away from zero-error tolerance and “the first shot must be right” towards trial and error, inspect and adapt, iterative-incremental work, hypotheses and experiments, public reviews, retrospectives at all levels, openness to ideas, courage to try them out.
There are many models and methods for this (e. g the Pioneers Trafo-ModellTM or the Pioneers 6-Erfolgsfaktoren-Modell). But what counts first and foremost is attitude!
Do you have any questions? Feel free to contact Till directly and send him a message via the form.
Tillmann Seidel
Management Psychosoph
+49 221 84 68 10 99