Develop Agility That Outlasts the Pandemic

There's nothing like a crisis to ignite innovation

COVID pandemic has resulted in

• New ventilator design in 10 days
• Unmanned store for essential supplies 
• Drive through takeout food with maximum safety and efficiency

All these innovations are happening sporadically rather than systematically. These were not part of any strategic plan or part of any compensation plan. typically a small group of people spotted an urgent need, broke procedures and found solutions on the fly. This sort of agility is fragile. When the emergency eases they may go back to a typical traditional command structure till the next crisis.

How do companies maintain this agility even when the present crisis passes

Build an agile system in agile ways:

Business systems have a greater impact on long term performance than individuals. Capitalise on times when agile innovations were successful to make business systems more agile. Spread the principles of agile throughout the organisation.

Engage people in changing the system through testing, learning and adaptation. Copying from elsewhere prevents people from developing skills for adapting, customising all elements of agility. Give people time to create and get adjusted to a new way of working.

Increase the speed of innovations:

During a crisis, executives speed up innovations, but agile organisations focus on speed even in normal times. One common measure is the time from identifying the problem to the time the solution is delivered. This time is determined by two factors - time to develop the solution and the time spent in waiting on others like approvals, budgets, planning calendars etc., On an average, only 15-20% time is spent on working on a solution and the rest is spent on waiting. By reducing the ait time you can achieve tremendous improvement in the total time spent.

One way to reduce wait times is to break up the work into smaller modules with rapid feedback loops. This allows people to respond faster and the solutions can also be short improvements that can be regularly reviewed and adapted. Even annual plans and budgets can be split into quarterly or bi-monthly periods to reduce the wait times and increase efficiency.

Reset balance between standard operations and innovation:

To succeed in dynamic environments companies must find the right balance between running the business reliably and efficiently as well as change rapidly and effectively. maintain the urgency to anticipate the next crisis and create a system that emphasises innovation as much as operations.

The current pandemic is the worst but not unique. We have witnessed many crises in last few decades over and above the usual calamities like data theft, trade wars etc., The future is also likely to see many unexpected challenges and businesses should be geared up to face these uncertainties. 

An agile business system can help companies create innovations they need to to survive the uncertain times.

Develop Agility That Outlasts the Pandemic

by Darrell K. Rigby , Sarah Elk and Steve Berez