Business agility was the hallmark of successful companies in 2020. Also known as organizational agility, it’s a company’s ability to respond to changing conditions and a measure of how adaptive, flexible, and creative a business is in the face of a changing environment.
The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a paradigm shift and changed the way we interact with our surroundings. Companies had to let go of traditional ways of working and become more agile. This agility helped businesses to become more resilient and think outside the box. The companies that survived and thrived during the pandemic were highly creative as they instantly made changes to fit into the new normal.
Characteristics Of Companies That Reflect Business Agility
- Customer-Centric Approach: They restructure and tailor their services to the needs and demands of their customers.
- Focus on Building Team Dynamics: They work on improving communication and building well-coordinated teams. They have well-oiled, highly functional teams that are clear on their responsibilities and have streamlined processes.
- Growth Mindset: Such companies strongly believe that mistakes and failures are a part of learning. They also believe that through sheer hard work, creative strategies, and helpful input from all fronts, they can become successful.
How To Become An Agile Business
The answer to all your woes begins with agile leadership.
As Simon Sinek once said, “So goes the leader, so goes the culture. So goes the culture, so goes the company.” Agile leaders will create agile teams who will promote agility in the company’s culture. Adaptable values and principles encourage leaders to use collaboration and empower their subordinates to grow. When done right, agility can help you grow together with your employees rather than push them to follow archaic principles, which will lower their morale.
If you want to develop business agility, you need to be informed about your business and organizational culture, as it will help you make the required changes. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself:
- How would you describe your workplace culture?
- What are your company’s purpose, vision, mission, and values, and do they help foster an innovative and flexible environment?
- Do your employees feel empowered? Are they highly engaged and motivated, or are they always stressed?
Once you have answered these, follow the below-mentioned tips to ensure business agility.
Use The Five P’s Of Prioritized Leadership To Develop Business Agility
Here are five excellent tips for developing effective leadership skills to nurture business agility:
Purpose
Purpose is the vision to see, articulate, and reach for a compelling future. Do you and your employees know what you are here to do? Does your purpose align with theirs? Defining your purpose brings clarity of vision. Combined with a shared set of values, you can maximize the potential of your organization. When your purpose is clear, you can inspire your employees to reach for your shared goals.
People
People pertains to how nurturing and productive your relationship is with your employees, colleagues, and partners. A healthy, productive culture is a balancing act of encouragement and accountability with your team. When a leader uses this harmonized approach, the team feels empowered. Agile and sustainable organizations rely on ongoing employee development.
Pace
Pace is discerning how quickly or slowly the organization and its personnel need to move to sustain long-term success, maximize opportunities, and grow capital. If your team is too stressed to work effectively, your bottom-line will suffer. Devoting the right time and energy to the projects that matter requires understanding the pace of your team and the pace of the assigned tasks. When your pace is aligned, you have the time and energy to innovate and solve problems.
Perception
Perception is choosing a growth mindset and staying open to solutions and new ideas. Is your company focused on the intellectual and creative firepower that drives innovation and problem-solving? Do you have a fixed mindset that limits your abilities?
With a fixed mindset, a person believes that their basic abilities and intelligence are fixed traits. They believe that they can’t grow their skills or understanding. Moreover, their goal is to look smart and never look dumb, which keeps them from learning new things.
On the other hand, a person with a growth mindset is someone who understands that their talents and abilities can be developed and honed through effort, training, and persistence. They learn from their mistakes and are willing to adapt to changing circumstances.
When your company has a growth mindset perception, it fosters constant insights and innovation.
Profit
Profit is the effective management, investment, and release of an organization’s resources. Even though profit is last in this list of priorities, it is critical. If we have all the other priorities in order, profit will come naturally. When profit is valued higher than the other four P’s, sacrifices are made at a great expense, such as unhappy and demotivated employees. However, a company should value profit so that it can spend responsibly.
Realizing the potential in your organization is critical. Evaluating where you and your company are with these five priorities can help you recalibrate and improve in each area. It will lead to greater levels of innovation, productivity, and profitability. In challenging times, you will have the foundation to be agile and move quickly to where your business needs to go in order to overcome any obstacle.
If you want to assess your company on the Five P’s of Prioritized Leadership, we can send you an assessment to complete. Our Prioritized Leadership program is packed with material, videos, and coaching to help your company get to where it needs to go.