The future of agile

Large organ­i­sa­tions face a dual-pronged exis­ten­tial threat, from both tech-cen­tric new mar­ket entrants and exist­ing com­peti­tors that are mov­ing from tech enabled to tech cen­tric.

A sim­ple exam­ple is in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor; if one car has updat­a­ble soft­ware and anoth­er doesn’t, the one with updat­a­ble soft­ware will be mod­i­fied in line with users’ needs through­out its life. This means cus­tomers gain from future inno­va­tions through updat­ing soft­ware rather than hav­ing to replace the whole vehi­cle.

If incum­bent oper­a­tors don’t recog­nise that they need to pro­duce a car that works this way, com­peti­tors and new entrants will. Just take a look at Tesla’s impact on the mar­ket – it’s now eclipsed GM and Ford to become the most valu­able US car­mak­er.

That’s a very spe­cif­ic case, but there are plen­ty of his­toric exam­ples of where busi­ness­es have failed to see emerg­ing trends or uses of tech­nol­o­gy, such as Kodak in the pho­tog­ra­phy space, Wool­worths on the high street and Block­buster in the enter­tain­ment mar­ket. In the cur­rent envi­ron­ment, any trans­for­ma­tion will almost cer­tain­ly be built around dig­i­tal, but the dan­gers posed to organ­i­sa­tions are the same as those fac­ing these famil­iar but now-depart­ed or seri­ous­ly dam­aged names.

Incum­bent organ­i­sa­tions need to trans­form and cen­tral to this is the need to adopt an agile men­tal­i­ty across their whole organ­i­sa­tion. This will allow them to har­ness their cur­rent advan­tages – their rep­u­ta­tions, size, finances and staff – while mov­ing from sin­gle ways of work­ing to a way that is rel­e­vant to each bit of work they do. It means adopt­ing a Kaizen mind­set, with each indi­vid­ual tak­ing own­er­ship and respon­si­bil­i­ty for his or her work, and being empow­ered to devel­op and improve their part of the organ­i­sa­tion, so the organ­i­sa­tion itself improves in a series of mar­gin­al gains.

Busi­ness lead­ers, in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, need to under­stand that they’re about to under­go a trans­for­ma­tion­al change to help them remain com­pet­i­tive

At its core, being agile is a mind­set. It’s almost a will to sur­vive in a chang­ing envi­ron­ment that is enabled by dif­fer­ent work­ing prac­tices. These could include the use of tech­niques such as scrum, scaled agile frame­work or dis­ci­plined agile deliv­ery, but these are not solu­tions on their own. These spe­cif­ic mea­sures tend to be cre­at­ed for the deliv­ery part of the organ­i­sa­tion, gen­er­al­ly IT or prod­uct func­tions.

But it’s impor­tant the whole organ­i­sa­tion is involved, includ­ing func­tions such as human resources, finance, pro­cure­ment and mar­ket­ing. Oth­er­wise the risk is they default to what they have always known, which has served them well in pro­tect­ing them against change in the past, but will no longer do so. That’s why a mind­set change is vital.

Busi­ness lead­ers, in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, need to under­stand that they’re about to under­go a trans­for­ma­tion­al change to help them remain com­pet­i­tive, and ulti­mate­ly stay in busi­ness for the next 15 or 20 years. Enlight­ened organ­i­sa­tions already under­stand that a holis­tic trans­for­ma­tion is required and that close to 100 per cent of the organ­i­sa­tion will need to be on board, because the com­peti­tors that are com­ing in are built around this men­tal­i­ty. Those that attempt to under­take a light-touch or nar­row, deliv­ery-ori­ent­ed ver­sion of agile imple­men­ta­tion will fail, and that will lead to the fail­ure of brands and busi­ness­es.

The start­ing point for any agile ini­tia­tive is to change the mind­set of senior lead­ers, and then to make con­tact with every mem­ber of the organ­i­sa­tion and explain to them the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion, and how they will be the dri­vers of change. Lead­ers must make it clear that if there are inef­fi­cien­cies they will be exploit­ed by new entrants and com­peti­tors, and that if some­body spots a degree of inef­fi­cien­cy or some­thing that could be done bet­ter then they need to flag it up and help to resolve it. After the mind­set has changed, it’s a case of look­ing at process­es and new ways of work­ing, and only then how soft­ware and oth­er tools can help enable that.

Organ­i­sa­tions which are seri­ous about adopt­ing an agile mind­set, which will help them over­come the chal­lenges they face from new entrants and more estab­lished com­peti­tors, can now take advan­tage of help from gov­ern­ment-backed busi­ness Axe­los. The joint ven­ture between the gov­ern­ment and Capi­ta owns the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty around best-prac­tice ways of work­ing in ser­vice man­age­ment, projects and pro­gramme man­age­ment, agile man­age­ment and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, and has now devel­oped a new ini­tia­tive tar­get­ing those look­ing to become agile busi­ness­es and safe­guard their future.

The first part cur­rent­ly being devel­oped is a two-day train­ing course which starts with mind­set and trans­for­ma­tion­al change, out­lin­ing why busi­ness­es need to adapt. Change is achieved with the buy-in of all lev­els of man­age­ment and this course is rec­om­mend­ed for every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion, from C‑suite to deliv­ery teams. Every­one should feel they are involved in defin­ing the future of their organ­i­sa­tion.

Essen­tial­ly it’s aimed at mak­ing peo­ple aware that the world around them is chang­ing and the peo­ple work­ing for the organ­i­sa­tion are the only ones who can enact change. Cours­es will be deliv­ered glob­al­ly through a net­work of part­ner com­pa­nies and con­sul­tan­cies, and there are also plans to offer online mod­ules, which peo­ple can com­plete at their own pace.

The risk for organ­i­sa­tions that fail to act now is that by the time they feel the pain and realise they have to do some­thing, it will prob­a­bly be too late. Now is the time to start the jour­ney of empow­er­ing teams and estab­lish­ing the right way to work, whether that’s in a pure­ly agile way or in a more tra­di­tion­al way, with some agile project man­age­ment also fea­tured.

What is impor­tant, though, is that organ­i­sa­tions enable ways of work­ing that are fit for the work they do, which break down bureau­cra­cy and ensure every­one in those busi­ness­es under­stands the process­es that kept them safe for decades may well no longer be fit for pur­pose. Only by embrac­ing change, while draw­ing on exist­ing advan­tages, such as mon­ey, great peo­ple, rep­u­ta­tion and brand, can organ­i­sa­tions hope to con­tin­ue to thrive in such a com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment.

To find out more about how Axe­los can help your busi­ness please vis­it www.axelos.com