Organisational agility
You would be hard pushed to find a corporate in Australia that doesn’t operate with some degree of ‘agile’. Whether it is PMOs running tech transformation or whole businesses designed as full agile houses, the Church of Agile is here to stay! It is not this agile that we really care about - as a team, we are human-centred and methodology agnostic when it comes to delivering large change programs. We care about the emotional and practical agility that enables teams to deal with the constant degree of change now required in business.
We argue that organisational agility will be a critical factor in our post-COVID-19 response, that organisations need to build their muscle in this department so that leaning into constant change is a core leadership capability that we are actively teaching as a skill set.
So I’m going to share my seven critical characteristics that are currently crystalising as factors that help organisations succeed in having organisational agility:
1
Ideally, having a clear and compelling narrative that links to a purpose beyond motherhood statements about ‘being the best’. We all want to be inspired, to feel like we are giving our energy to a cause that is worth getting out of bed (and elasticated activewear) for.
2
Businesses with agility can tell the story at every level and in every corner of the business about how each team is helping deliver amazing customer experiences and add enormous value.
3
Leaders are comfortable saying that they don’t have all the answers but committing to honest and transparent engagement to keep their teams connected and to the organisations’ emerging changes.
4
Leaders able to navigate constant change invest in non-negotiable check-ins, 1:1s and coaching conversations with each member of their team that starts with an acknowledgement of feelings and emotions - we jump all too often straight to the tasks that need to be completed in the conversation and have lost the preamble and postamble human connections that help foster trust and build deeper relationships than task distribution and management. It is in the moments between the tasks that psychological safety grows.
5
When teams are talking task, teams with agility manage both medium-term and short-term goals. When things start moving fast, sprints of two weeks help everyone stay focused, have a sense of alignment and achievement and connectedness to the tasks in hand - side note - knowing that it’s not a marathon of sprints, taking a pause to celebrate and acknowledge success is also a critical component of running fast.
6
Trying to navigate flexible working practices is now increasingly complex. We are finding that the teams that are building strong trust and fearless agility are getting together as humans, in a shared physical space. Now we know that many international teams can’t do this, widely distributed teams very rarely get to be in the same state, let alone the same room (especially as the tail of the COVID-19 scorpion continues to randomly sting) - but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to make it happen - once a week for teams in the same city, once a month for leadership teams and try to do the whole team get together once a quarter. There is something so very human about a hug, a pat on the shoulder for a job well done, an in-person celebration, a tray of cupcakes after a release. It’s the informal glue that connects us.
7
What we know from social cognitive neuroscience is that a team’s ability to deal with conflict is tapped out at the level of deep trust that individuals in the team feel for each other. Constant change means that things will get messy, there will be tension as people try to stay up to speed and understand their roles and how they should be helping their teams navigate ‘this’ change. High performing teams actually have a higher level of conflict than lower-performing teams - as people really kick the tyres on each other’s ideas and solutions - mega important in project teams - healthy conflict is full of curiosity, building on others’ ideas, fostering growth mindsets and not just worrying about your own patch but thinking about the whole.
