Getting Agile: Reflections on the Think Tank results

Reflections on the Business Think Tank results

The Synthetron team recently organised a business think tank session on the subject of Business Agility, defined for the session as the ability to react quickly to change.The session gave me pause to reflect, not least about my own agility.

Most of us started the session thinking that more agility would be a good thing. We have read the stories about the modern technology companies who seem to be able to create and implement new business models in a few weeks, and most of us have seen our own companies struggle to do very much at all in that timescale.

People in the conversation also had a good idea what an agile environment would feel like. We’d be able to get decisions and take risks and make mistakes. There would be a lot of listening and learning, and not much bureaucracy. Things would feel small and fresh.

But then we were asked to think about what first steps would help make our environment more agile, and what KPI an “agility czar” might be judged against. This was harder. The energy in the discussion increased, but there were few synthetrons and more disagreement. It was generally agreed that attitudes and behaviours would be key. Somehow we would have to demonstrate trust and empowerment, and engage and listen more. But how?

There were plenty of interesting thoughts. Someone made a connection between agility and relentless performance management: if we are all given strict tasks and targets and judged against these, we might have less incentive (and less time) to react to what we see changing around us. That felt credible, and also disturbing: surely intense performance management is a good thing?

Sacrifices for Agility

Why was agility seen as so desirable, but so little seemed to be available to practically achieve it? The menu for everyone in the discussion would be quite different. And there might be wider messages available too.

The comment about performance management got me thinking. Perhaps other well-established practices also come at the expenses of agility. Many of us have endured attempts by our companies to become bigger, to harmonize practice, converge regions and demand standardisation. That is hardly likely to support agility – not only is personal initiative downplayed in favour of conformance, but also decision chains get slower and more complex. In my own career, I’m convinced I’ve seen more diseconomies of scale than I have economies, and every time I’ve been part of a standardisation programmes I think it has made things worse – at great expense and great distraction from the customer. Mergers are even worse.

Who wins from all these so-called good practices? Winners include managers who love predictability and control, and people looking to build senior careers in service functions like finance. Power hungry CEO’s can see the allure. Weak management teams can create distraction from losing to their competitors.

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