Adaptive leaders know what to do when they don't know what to do.
Successful organisations also need adaptive leadership teams. Leadership at the top is now a team effort. Top teams must be more than just high performing. They need to adapt and thrive, regardless of the turbulence they face.
A BCG Strategy Institute study titled “The Value of Adaptive Advantage” (2010) shows that more-adaptive companies generate powerful economic and financial gains. These companies consistently outperform their industry peers during periods of volatility, and they sustain superior performance over time, whether it’s 5 years or 30 years. The results also show a strong correlation between a company’s adaptability index score and total shareholder return.
Speed
And last but certainly not least is the need for speed.
Agile is here and you had better be ready to manage the people side of rapid change. It is time to release your waterfall ways!
The only way to be truly responsive to constant change is to become more agile. (Note: I use agile with a small ‘a’).
Business demand means agile transformations and iterative implementations and organizations are now challenged with managing the people side of such fast-paced change.
It’s not enough to rely on communications and training alone. Many existing change
management models follow waterfall rather than agile practices.
The waterfall approach to change won’t work on an agile project because agile won’t know the end state until close to the release.
Organisational change management has to adapt to an agile world!
Organisational change management needs to align with agile practices in order to manage change during iterative development cycles.
Challenges for organisational change are time, information and planning. None of which are as available as they used to be! Therefore it is important to build change along the way and keep pace with the sprint development schedule and evolving cadence.
Organisational change has to match the rhythm so that agile and organisation change become one.
Summary
This has been a sneak preview into the six areas I have been working on and you can read more detail here.
I know that organisations are currently talking about disruption, transformation, agility, innovation, delegation, permission and so on. I hear these words all the time. I also know that most organisations are struggling to determine where to start.
Karen is considered a thought Leader in Organisational Change and Service Management. She is an acclaimed author, speaker, facilitator, coach and mentor. You can find out more about Karen at www.karenferris.com
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