Cos should embrace agility to
drive innovation at work
Change In Mindset,
Operating Model Needed To Face Disruption
Our journey to digital
transformation was given a leg-up as our new CEO for Maersk Global Services,
Navneet Kapoor, joined us in mid-2017. In his view, many digital non-native
companies, despite having the will and wherewithal to transform, have a high
failure rate. Yet, success is possible if a virtuous cycle of doers and
decision makers come together in a startup ecosystem, with an infusion of
engineering talent that flourishes in an environment of intrapreneurship. This
thought has been put in action with our set up at Maersk Digital Centre in
Bengaluru.
Ownership of large assets and a
history of success often makes many large corporates blind. Organisations need
to be fully self-aware as its leaders need to survive and grow in this changing
era. Every company needs to assess if they are doing all they can to innovate
and serve their customers. Speed is critical as compared to how we used to
measure time to market. One needs to move in quickly to build an agile way of
working where self-managed and truly empowered teams are a reality.
Agility is common sense with
discipline, which is its core strength. It requires adaptive planning through a
time-based iterative approach and encourages rapid and flexible responses. The
barriers to agility are many: Holding on to legacy, bureaucracy, KPI-based
reviews, inadequate resources allocation, trying to scale without infusing digital
capabilities, and lack of trust/transparency.
Akey challenge an organisation
faces in embracing agility is the mindset. For many on the senior-leadership
team, agility requires a significant change in mindset. Traditionally, they
have been focused on requesting and approving big-bang system changes.
According to a McKinsey report on digital transformation, C-suite leaders need
to understand the benefits of a perpetual-evolution model that emphasises
continuous monitoring and renewal across all elements of technology stacks. If
we simply try to adapt, we are still tied to a milestone-linked planning of
project management or reviews, the waterfall way. For perpetual evolution,
companies should commit to continually update their enterprise architectures.
Embracing agility begins with a
change in the operating model. Organisations need to take a hard look at how
they are organised and re-stack themselves around customers and businesses for
future agility and innovation. This may sound daunting. However, as it is
agile, the approach can fire in phases through iterative and incremental
development. The new model/s need to dramatically remove any artificial
fragmentation that is created for the sake of control or managing certain SLAs
to improve efficiency.
This may call for an organisation
redesign, where the structure is networked and not hierarchical with larger
spans of control, bringing leaders closer to teams while breaking functional
silos. As Spotify calls it, the organisation should be ‘loosely coupled and
tightly aligned’. A setup of small cross-disciplinary teams staffed with top
most talent working on a brutal priority list, is like an ‘amoeba
organisation’. The organisation is divided into small neural network units
responsible for drafting their own milestones and succeed through collaboration
of all its members. According to Google, it’s a flat organisation where ideas
are generated by all employees and not through chain of commands. These teams
deliver through continuous integration, continuous delivery, testdriven
development, and learn on the go as they course correct. In this approach,
products are a combination of experiences and offerings.
Organisations that embrace
agility, have an outstanding customer obsession. They ruthlessly prioritise to ensure
customers remain relevant. Organisations should strive towards becoming a real
partner in customer’s growth, be it sensing their needs for the future or
addressing their pain.
Leaders driving transformations in
organisations carry a special disruption DNA in themselves. While transcending
functional boundaries and silos they can work through self-organising
autonomous teams. Old school leaders, even the ones coming from a technology
background, wouldn’t necessarily work in generating followership in talent as
they will not be able to engage unless they discard the typical control and
command school of management. The culture of test, learn and fail fast but
forward, is the key to innovation.
Agility is not a silver bullet,
neither is it the goal for an organisation. Adaptive planning is an approach
where action leads to results and learning is iterative.We start simple by
eliminating one paper, one task and one hand-off.
By Pratap G
The author is
senior director (HR), Maersk Global Services Centre.
TOI 10JAN18
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