Getting agile right in your organization
Across industries and
regions, the concept of organizational agility is catching fire as companies
scurry to deal with rapid change and complexity. Yet, achieving the ability to
reshape themselves quickly is proving elusive for most.
The findings of
McKinsey’s first global research study of agile organizations underscores the
difficulties in achieving their desired nimbleness. But it also illuminates
that getting agile right delivers substantial rewards ranging from efficiency
improvements and improved customer satisfaction, to faster time to market.
We cast a broad net in
our research, and it delivered some major surprises in identifying key success factors for
becoming agile. Among them:
1. An organization must
excel at all the 18 identified key practices to achieve agility.
Our research finds that doing
a few of the key practices well is not enough, all 18 must be embraced. The 18
include some basic elements – such as standardizing ways of working and sharing
access to unfiltered data – and several more advanced techniques, such as
having an open talent marketplace where people move regularly between roles and
teams. You must address the holistic set of levers to scale organizational
agility across most or all of an institution.
2. Speed is central to
becoming agile, but so is stability.
Organizational agility requires a core set of
organizational elements that don’t change a lot, such as a platform to build
and launch fast, dynamic capabilities. Even if your company is stable, you need
to determine how it is stable. Most global enterprises possess
the wrong type of constancy; instead of a launching pad for dynamism, most big
companies today have stable elements that are bureaucratic “speed killers,”
such as rigid organizational structures centered on hierarchy and control.
The research identified
six stable, foundational practices among the 18 key elements upon which to
build and scale agility, such as a shared vision and purpose that establishes a
North Star for the entire organization.
3. An organization must
deal head-on with the No. 1 agility challenge: culture and leadership mindsets.
They surpass insufficient
resources, lack of leadership commitment and system limitations as the biggest
barriers to becoming nimbler. To solve them requires abandoning many basic
assumptions about how organizations can and should work, including that senior
leaders must maintain control. Letting go of control is vital to becoming
agile.
Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos
gets it. In a 2016 letter to shareholders, he maintained that the company must
treat every day like it’s Day 1. “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance.
Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why
it is always Day 1,” he wrote. To keep that Day 1 energy, he says, requires
being extra fast on making decisions, even if they must later be reversed or
are made without having full information. And, he said, senior leaders must
feel free to disagree with a decision, although they must fully commit to it if
they’re outvoted.
Understanding these
three insights from our research into how to become agile will especially
benefit organizations starting or still in the early stages of their journey to
agility. In subsequent blog posts, we will explore other essential ingredients
for achieving an agile organization, including a deeper examination of the 18
practices considered essential to adopt.
February 5,
2018 – by Aaron De Smet
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organization-blog/getting-agile-right-in-your-organization?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1803&hlkid=c03fb6991bc9428d83194a7b66694ba4&hctky=1627601&hdpid=69d4cb78-4c11-416c-b540-4ad2772a4b31
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