Change Agility

K E Y T O S U C C E S S I N V U C A B U S I N E S S W O R L D
CHANGE AGILITY

INTRODUCTION
The term VUCA, coined by the US Army War College, describes the dynamic
nature of our world today and has caught on in a variety of organizational settings
to describe a business environment characterized by:
 Volatility – The nature, speed, volume, magnitude and dynamics of
change;
 Uncertainty – The lack of predictability of issues and events;
 Complexity – The confounding of issues and the chaos that surround any
organization; and
 Ambiguity– The haziness of reality and the mixed meanings of conditions.

CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF AGILITY
For an agile outcome to occur there are three main areas where interventions could be
undertaken: at an organizational level, team level and individual level. Here is the simple
model to represent these three levels.

ORGANIZATIONAL AGILITY
Organizational agility is achieved by being alert to both internal and environmental changes -
opportunities as well as challenges - and the ability to use available resources in a timely,
flexible, affordable and relevant manner, in order to respond to those changes effectively.
Keys to the Organizational Agility:
1. Leadership & Management
2. Innovation
3. Strategy
4. Culture
5. Learning & Change
6. Structure

TEAM AGILITY
Agile Teams soar by easily adapting to changing business conditions. Team Agility includes
Foresight, willingness to change, ability to adapt, and actually moving forward. Leadership
people skills can spark and kindle it!
Keys to the Team Agility:
1. Keys to the Team Agility
2. Interact through Activity
3. Applaud initiative instead of rebuking it
4. Empower decision making
5. Untie the “nots”
6. Focus on greatness not the best

INDIVIDUAL AGILITY
First, Individual Agility requires the individual to perceive changes in their environment.
Second, they must then do something differently once they have detected the change.
Third, the driver for agility is time and outcome bound because they have to successfully
achieve this change before the onset of failure.
Keys to the Individual Agility:
1. Efficiency to Responsiveness
2. Hierarchies to Network
3. Controlling to Empowering
4. Extrinsic Rewards to Intrinsic Motivation
5. Traditional Workplaces to Connected Workspaces
6. Customers & Suppliers to Community

CHANGE MANAGEMENT & AGILITY
Change management capability is a critical enabler of organizational agility
 Change agility is an attribute of an organization - it is a state of being.
 There are many aspects or moving parts of a change agile organization, one universally recognized
component is an organizational change management capability.
 Building an organizational change management capability not only enables change agility, it also results in
more effective application of change management and, ultimately, in higher success rates on change
initiatives.
 With ever increasing demands to change - coming from within and outside of the organization - building
change agility is more important today than ever before.
 Executives are recognizing the need for change agility.
 An organizational change management capability is not the only component of change agility, but it is a
critical enabler identified nearly universally.
 If you want to build an organizational change management capability, you must apply structure and intent
to the effort.

BUSINESS BENEFITS OF CHANGE AGILITY
 Improved competitiveness - Agile organizations are more competitive and successful
because they move quickly to see and act on challenges, opportunities, and emerging trends.
 Higher revenues and results - The purpose of agility is to align your organization to
achieve the best possible results.
 Improved customer satisfaction - Customers are becoming more demanding.
Customers want their suppliers to be flexible, responsive, and open to hearing and acting on
their ideas.
 Improved employee satisfaction - Agile organizations ensure that their employee's
efforts are results oriented and that their work matters.
 Improved operational efficiencies - For most organizations, change is not predictable.
If this is true for your organization, you will need employees to be ready and willing to adapt
as needed.

WHAT STOPS PEOPLE FROM BEING CHANGE
AGILE?
 Old people - Agile has the smell of death on it. If you go to an “agile” event you will see few people under
the age of 40 and many over 50.
 Stagnation - "My development guys don't think 'agile' is interesting“. Most organizations which use the
word "agile" are using the word precisely because they are NOT agile, and want to be more agile.
 Imposing values - We value this. We value that. I don’t think values have anything to do with
productivity or collaboration. Productivity is comes from shared GOALS, not shared values.
 Scrum Master Roles - Some scrum coaches rank among the nicest and most thoughtful people that I
ever met. A scrum master is not supposed to lead the team, code, or take responsibility for deliverables.
 Estimating - A good, detailed estimate with task breakdowns is very reassuring if you are using it to make
a budget decision. If you already know what you want to do then estimating is a waste of time. It reduces
productivity by wasting time.
 Pair programming - Great for vendors, bad for customers. Pair programming is like those girls that go
to the restaurant bathroom together. If you are a vendor selling “pairs”, you can charge twice as much, to
steal talent for turnover. If you are customer, you pay twice as much and you get churn.

CHANGE AGILITY MEASUREMENTS
A quick survey of tools to measure degree of leanness shows that there are 7-10 tools
in practice. Some of them are listed below.
 Lean Manufacturing Screening Tool Developed at University of Toledo
 Virginia Philpott Manufacturing Extension Partnership (VPMEP) Lean
Assessment Tool
 A model for evaluating the degree of Leanness of manufacturing firms
 Assessment tool by Saturn Electronics & Engineering Inc.
 West of England Aerospace Forum (WEAF)
 Lean Aerospace Initiative – Lean Enterprise Self-Assessment Tool (LAI-LESAT)
 The Lean Extended Enterprise Assessment Process (LEEAP)

CONCLUSION
In summary, change agility is the capability of a leader to dynamically sense and respond to
changes in the business environment with actions that are focused, fast and flexible. It is about
a leader’s ability to prepare all employees for a VUCA world that enables them to shift their
mindsets and supporting skills from “I know change is coming, but I can’t really see the
potential changes that might impact our organization” to “I see change coming and am
prepared and already doing something about it.”
In short, we must anticipate. Human resources can help increase leadership agility by:
 Understanding what is required of leaders to survive and thrive in a VUCA world;
 Identifying their individual leadership agility strengths and development needs; and
 Embedding leadership agility in their talent management processes

Change Agility

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