L
LEARNING
to be able to do both and, crucially,
make the right decisions where and
when to focus their efforts. The key
skill is knowing how to read any
specific situation and react
accordingly.
In a 2004 Harvard Business
Review article, Charles A. O’Reilly and
Michael L Tushman introduced the
concept of the ‘ambidextrous’
organisation, capable of “exploiting
the present and exploring the future”.
Their research showed that, with
innovation, the key to success was
ambidextrous senior teams and
managers able to lead across
organisations while “combining the
attributes of rigorous cost cutters
and free-thinking entrepreneurs” — a
similar conclusion to McKinsey’s
stability and speed thesis.
Ambidexterity may also be a
useful prism through which to view
agile leadership. Few would doubt
that the fourth industrial revolution
has created an irrevocably changed
business environment, nor that
leaders must be able to deploy key
agile techniques such as cross-
functional teams, a focus on
customers or greater flexibility in
planning. But even the Agile Alliance
originators of The Agile Manifesto
talked about balance. Perhaps the
most important leadership mindset
is one that views contrasting
approaches to project management
— and management and leadership
more generally — as complementary,
tools and techniques in a toolbox of
options rather than silver bullets.
78 // Future Talent
Stephen Denning,
The Age of Agile:
How Smart Companies
Are Transforming the
Way Work Gets Done,
Amacom, 2018. Andrew Pressman,
Design Thinking:
A Guide to Creative
Problem Solving for
Everyone, Routledge,
2018. McKinsey Agile
Organizations hub:
mckinsey.com/
featured-insights/
agile-organizations
Simon Hayward,
The Agile Leader:
How to Create an Agile
Business in the Digital
Age, Kogan Page, 2018. Jeff Sutherland,
Scrum:
The Art of Doing Twice
the Work in Half the
Time, Random House
Business Books, 2014. Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff
Sutherland and Hirotaka
Takeuchi, Embracing
Agile: Harvard Business
Review, May 2016.
FURTHER READING