🚀 What are the foundations of #agility and #Innovation? 🚀


I am really looking forward to unpacking this question with this amazing panel 🙏:

👉Liz Rider, Global Head of Leadership and Culture Agile HR,Volvo Cars
👉Marcia M Robinson, Global Head of Knowledge Strategy, AIG
👉Amit Avasthi, Head HR CISR, DRL
👉Amy “Amy H-R” Hanlon-Rodemich, People Officer at GlobalLogic, Hitachi
Moderator: Minola Jac

I’m planning to contribute to the discussion, by drawing on my research and practice that I have been doing with IBM/ Kyndryl colleagues over the last 15 years.

My experience shows that getting the foundations of agility right is critical. We know from several studies that Agility is a top priority for CEOs around the world.   During the pandemic, we have seen the need for agility and innovation rise dramatically.

But what is agility?

It’s the ability to change both direction and speed quickly and easily. Think of your favourite sports person, how they move with pace, how they have strength and balance, how they have focused intent, and they seem to have more time than their opponent.

💯 So the benefits of hashtag#agile are real!

❌ So, what gets in the way? Why is it hard to cultivate workforce agility?

The main barrier based on my research and the research of many others, is organisation design and policies based upon risk aversion (Command and Control hierarchies) that are tend to be inconsistent with agile innovation.

So as senior leaders, what can we do to differently to accelerate creating the organisation of the future ?

Well, the research and practice that I have been doing suggests that there are key foundational areas around learning, disrupting, planning and execution that helped make agile work in practice. Four foundational behaviours include:

➡️ Learning agility.   This is key because agile innovation depends on teams in your organisation experimenting and seeking customer feedback regularly, which means that mistakes are inevitable.

➡️ Feeling safe. Creating an environment where people feel safe to personal risk – where people feel confident and supported, to take intelligent risks to experiment, and to speak out without fearing the response.

➡️ Ruthless prioritisation. Focusing on the few things that matter most.   Agile teams work on the top priorities, get them done quickly and well.   And nothing else. They prioritize ruthlessly.

➡️ Devolving decision making.  The organisation is focused on the devolved decision making to keep things close as close to the customer as possible.

❓Which of the four behaviours do you think is most helpful for your organisation to focus on first, to shift your organisation towards greater agility and driving innovation ? 📣

❓What other behaviours do you believe is foundational and would like to hear us talk about? 📣.

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