Business Growth Through Improved Product Development
What is Strategic Agility?
Strategic Agility is: "The ability to sense and take advantage of opportunities by planning and executing far-reaching business changes swiftly and effectively as needed."
In other words, Strategic Agility is a set of philosophies and evolving capabilities that work together to enable firms to steer continuously to new opportunities that present themselves. These capabilities must span your business processes, tools and organizations.
Traditional "change management" is so hard because changes are managed as one time events that have to fight against the existing processes, management systems, organizational inertia and a history of changes taking too long or not sticking.
There is a better approach. Strategic Agility is a systemic orientation toward changing when needed. Think of it as continuously steering an organization to maximize success. Even large companies can get much more strategically agile once they recognize how their management systems bog them down.
Why Strategic Agility?
Consider today's business environment where all but the most closely held information is available to anyone, anytime; capabilities change overnight through alliances; great talent is distributed around the world; the rate of market and technology change continues to accelerate; and many industries are in the midst of paradigm shifting inflection points.
To make matters worse, traditional management systems excel at reinforcing the status quo by emphasizing a slow, annual cadence of planning and reward systems; by drowning participants in data that makes it too hard to update directions more frequently; by exhibiting a command and control style that is ineffective at driving proactive change through an organization; and by having the systems in place reinforce pre-existing behaviors. Freeing yourself from the tyranny of your existing management systems is difficult, but can be done once you recognize how they relate to behaviors that need to change.
There are two key reasons why most businesses need to improve their Strategic Agility:
1. Competitive advantages are now temporary!
If that's the case, you need to identify and extract business benefit from the best opportunities that present themselves.
2. Today companies die by doing what used to be the right thing - too long!
Therefore, you succeed over an extended period by achieving a short business renewal cycle. You gain a sustainable advantage by working on the new "right things" faster than your competitors, again and again.
Continuous Steering to Business Success
This is not about constant change, rather it's about making renewal a normal part of what your business does. Think about driving your car. When you see the curves coming, you steer. When on a straightaway, perhaps you accelerate. Turning your car is normal, but not constant. Strategic Ability is the capability to steer better than the other guys.
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For a fun way to get a sense for where your business is on a Strategic Agility scale, download this pdf and take the quiz now!
Overview
For a brief overview on Strategic Agility, download this pdf document. Following up to this blueprint to create a more successful enterprise may be the most strategic choice you can make.
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"In just 90 minutes, Bob Becker was able to deliver an exceptional, thought provoking introduction to Strategic Agility that has reinforced our chosen direction while highlighting some other strategic considerations. His comprehensive approach helped us realize that there is no quick fix, but the framework provides excellent guidance on the best leverage points for us to consider. Every management team should find the time to hear this."
