Why organisational and workforce agility is about mindset, not just process

The start of the pandemic saw a lot of new managerial acronyms being thrown around by businesses trying to make sense of the situation and get back on their feet quickly. VUCA, a US Military term meaning Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous was one such acronym. It was a useful catch-all for a situation where everyone was asking ‘what on earth is going on?’

The pandemic was a particularly extreme set of events, but leaders today deal with VUCA situations all the time. In this piece, we discuss why, to survive and thrive, developing organisational and workforce agility is paramount.

Agility as a mindset

When operating within a complex climate, like so many businesses face today, there are unknown variables with unknown potential outcomes. The best approach is to adopt an emergent way thinking, awlays probing, sensing and responding. Think of a surfer – always paddling, anticipating, and horizon scanning. Never waiting for certainty

If we’re operating within a complex or chaotic environment, where the relationship between cause and effect is hard to unpick, we need focus on the most pressing issues. It’s important to create stability as much as we can and be prepared to accept that action normally beats inaction. In essence, we should assess the situation and adapt our thinking and decision-making styles in the most effective manner possible.

But, it takes a serious dose of agile thinking to tailor our mindset in any given moment to the different modes of decision making required. Essentially it takes agile thinking to decide if agile thinking is required. When we utilise agility not only as a way of operating, but as a fundamental way of thinking, we can drive performance and transformations that are real-time solutions to the real-time world in which we live.

Developing an agile culture

Your organisation’s culture – “the way things are around here” – serves as the lens through which your team views situations and so defines how they operate. So, in order for a culture of agility to be created, your team needs to first have a mindset geared towards agility. This means giving people the insight and ability to think with an agile mindset and creating a space for people to deploy agility.

You can’t tell someone to practice long-distance running and then keep them in a cage – they need somewhere to train. Similarly, you can’t tell people to be agile if you haven’t provided an environment for them to do so.

The three pillars of agility

A recipe for agility is made up of three key ingredients – speed, flexibility, and breakthrough ambition. But what exactly do they look like in a business environment?

1. 1. Speed

Speed is about anticipating a need for action before it’s too late. For leaders, this means being able to get ahead of the curve and sense emerging trends in the industry they work in. Let’s take Airbnb for example. They were present to what people within their industry wanted – being able to travel to far-flung destinations while avoiding crowds of other tourists with the same idea. They anticipated the market, saw a gap within it, and created a transformational way of operating within that market.

2. 2. Flexibility

Flexibility takes the form of challenging conventions, unlearning what we hold to be the truth, and being open to challenges. It can be difficult to let go of processes and ways of thinking that are deeply ingrained within us, but being flexible means being able to take a step back and drop processes or thought patterns that are holding us back.

The final ingredient, and the one that really brings the recipe to life, is breakthrough ambition. This is the motivation to act with speed and flexibility in the first place, and without it, the first two ingredients count for nothing.

3. 3. Breakthrough ambition

Breakthrough ambition is about setting out a vision or goal that is truly transformational. In a way, it’s the more focussed younger sibling of “tearing up the rule book”. This isn’t meant in a sense of unruliness, but rather in a way that does away with prediction-based futures. It’s about breaking conventions and not acting in a way that is based on yesterday’s results. In an ever-changing market, how can you expect yesterday’s actions to work tomorrow?

If you can cultivate a culture that combines speed, flexibility and breakthrough ambition, then you’ve created a culture of agility.

Looking to push the boundaries of what’s possible? Get in touch to explore how we can help you ignite your ambitions.