The COVID-19 pandemic and associated snap lock-downs has taught us many things including that in business, most organisations need to be able to adapt quickly to significant change and there is a need to be resilient when significant disruptions occur.
Many organisations believe that to change their way or working to be more agile is to just “implement Agile” from the ground up. If organisations take that approach, this is likely to mean that implementation is at a slower pace and is less likely to be fully embedded or actually fundamentally improve the way an organisation works. A much faster and more likely way to ensure change is embedded in the long term, would be for the Executive Team to lead the organisation through the cultural, structural and strategic change.
Whole of organisation, often referred to as Business Agility, ways of working obviously has to work for your organisation, industry, stakeholders plus the wider the system you’re operating in. Therefore allowing it to be implemented from the ground up means you’re probably having teams who do the work, to waste time on something that is more likely to fail than if the Executive Team was to take the lead.
Once an Executive Team decided to take the lead and commence the transformation, they should follow four key initial steps:
- To either validate that the team based/Business Agility ways of working aligns with your purpose and mission or validate within the Executive Team that it is the direction the organisation needs now head towards.
- Identify all key stakeholders who need to be on board, including external stakeholders, and ensure they support or are aware of the benefits to implementing the significant change.
- Create a working group/team with a clear vision, capacity, skills and authority from the Executive Team to implement the change.
- The Executive Team to be prepared to provide ongoing support for the working group including required budget allocation, time, communication and for the team to have an open mind.