Business Agility: A Necessity in 2022

The new year is here. The new year offers an opportunity to rest both at the enterprise level and the individual level. From the organisation point of view, especially in this highly volatile and complex Covid-19 era, Business Agility has become a necessity. Business Agility is an organisation’s ability to rapidly adapt to market and environmental changes in productive and cost-effective ways. To make 2022 count, enterprises must, more than ever before, focus on what matters. Organisations need to focus on value delivery by having internal stakeholders identify, prioritise, and sequence the work to be done and allocate it appropriately to the product teams.

Business Agility has become a necessity. Business Agility is an organisation’s ability to rapidly adapt to market and environmental changes in productive and cost-effective ways.

Business Agility utilises a set of organisational capabilities, behaviours, and ways of working that gives organisations the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to achieve their purpose. This freedom is found in Disciplined Agile. Disciplined Agile (DA) is an agnostic, hybrid tool kit that binds many proven Agile, Lean, and conventional approaches together, allowing teams and organisations to choose their way of working (WoW). So, instead of organisations blindly following “agile in name only” strategies, tactics and prescriptive frameworks, DA proposes freedom. The freedom that does not force agile corporations to adopt certain processes and tools but considers the real reasons why adopting agile throughout all functional areas.  In 2022, organisations must embrace the freedom that comes with Discipline Agile, which will make the journey towards Business Agility achievable. Business agility focuses on the capacity and willingness of organisations to adapt to, create, and leverage change for their customer’s benefit.

In 2022, organisations must embrace the freedom that comes with Discipline Agile, which will make the journey towards Business Agility achievable.

Organisations need to consider optimising their ways of working this year. This is because Business Agility enables the realisation of the highest value in a very short amount of time, predictably, sustainably and with high quality. And this is achieved by working in small delivery increments. Teams continuously modify to what is needed, empowering the organisation to change direction at a low cost. If Business Agility is on your organisation’s menu this year, everyone should be involved! Business Agility starts with a One Team mindset of co-creative efforts. A mindset that leads to the achievement of shared goals that encompass functions, teams, and business units. This means that not one, but all operational and business areas should contribute to business-wide agility. It should happen across the board. For instance, the human resource department should progressively run on-the-job training needed for the future of work instead of merely capturing the needed skills in surveys.

The question is: “what do organisations need to put in place to be on the right path towards Business Agility?”

Most of the time, Business Agility appears abstract to professionals. The question is: “what do organisations need to put in place to be on the right path towards Business Agility?” First, Business Agility does not only require a good relationship between leaders and the board of directors but also between leaders and members of the organization. The kind of relationship that is customer-focused and sold out to the long-term success of the organisation. With this commitment in place, business leaders would be confident to go after long-term priorities, rather than short-term wins. Second, Business Agility needs a psychologically empowered workforce. A culturally fit team has almost all it takes to make its organisation agile. Third, Business Agility is built on good partnerships, alliances that are created with flexibility and propelled by customer value. As stated in the third value of the “Manifesto for Agile Software development” – Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. These partnerships constantly operate in a harmonised and complementary approach, rather than a series of contractual transactions.

The need for leaders who set and clearly communicate the operating strategy cannot be overstressed. The leaders empower teams to identify opportunities, innovate and test their ideas in a safe environment. The team members, on the other hand, should be continuous and life-long learners who take personal development very seriously while comfortably operating in a dynamic and ambiguous environment, free from the fear of failure. Business Agile environment helps individuals to take advantage of emergent opportunities. In 2022, I challenge you to look at strategies that are not serving your organisations and start tracking towards Business Agility. If you would like to discuss more about implementing the needed change towards Business Agility, talk to me. I will love to hear from you and help you create amazing business results and a lasting impact in 2022.

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