Agility shouldn’t be a buzzword, and it’s definitely not “just” a methodology. It’s a critical consideration within organization design — and an existential necessity for modern organizations.
What happens when organizations don’t have the capacity to change? Or, even worse, when organizations don’t know that change needs to happen in the first place?
They become brittle and eventually, they break.
The antidote to this inflexibility is agility, my preferred definition of which goes like this: “the ability to move quickly, decisively, and effectively in anticipating, sensing, initiating, and taking advantage of change.” And learning agility isn’t just a pie-in-the-sky idea: it’s a survival skill.
I’ve studied organizational agility academically, and I’ve been involved in implementing its principles here at Domain7 and on behalf of other organizations in some capacity for over two decades. But my interest in agility started even before that, when I was an undergraduate student in biology.
Variability, evolution and adaptation are key concepts in biology. If an organism exists in a highly static, stable environment, maximizing specialization for that environment may be beneficial. But, what if the environment is more dynamic? If a population doesn’t have some variance—if it is too homogenized—it risks being wiped out as its environment changes. Variance in a population and the process of adaptation are a type of natural agility required for species to survive.
As our environments change ever more rapidly, it is no longer viable to optimize and specialize on the assumption that things will remain static—doing so risks creating a dangerous brittleness.
Through this series, I’ve collected the insights I’ve gained through study and experience about organizational agility: what it is, why you should (or even must) care about it, and how to start intentionally building it into your organization.
Want the takeaways? Download our cheat sheet to the key concepts in the series.
James Phillips is a lifelong student of leadership, project management, and group facilitation. James’ previous experience includes his work as an Accenture consultant on business systems, a Master’s degree in Leadership from Royal Roads, and a PMP certification. James has presented on systems thinking, written extensively on organizational agility, and excels at understanding, dissecting, and reimagining the operations, processes, and workflows conducive to effective team functioning.
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