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AGILITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL
CHANGE CAPABILITIES
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The results of the second Agile Performer Index have confirmed that success belongs to companies which are resilient in the sense that they recognize and adapt to change variations and that have managed to embed these agile capabilities in their organization.
However, most companies still lack the required change capabilities and therefore do not achieve the targeted success with their agile transformations. As mentioned before, the profound organizational and cultural change towards becoming agile is a multi-year journey requiring tremendous effort.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CHANGE CAPABILITIES
For companies that want to embark on a journey towards agility, the second Agile Performer Index gives many insights into the ongoing, inner workings of agile organizations. When examining agility factors within the four agility routines, it becomes apparent that across all industries change and learning scores are especially low. These results correlate with the companies’ self-assessment of their change capabilities.
When asked about their change capabilities within their organizations, only few respondents agreed that people in their organization applied design tools to make change initiatives successful and generated data promptly to understand a change’s success. However, participants rated their companies’ attentiveness to changes in their external environments and the competencies to align change initiatives to fit their cultures better. Overall, the evaluation of change capabilities showed only little differences between industries or regions.
These results represent a picture of how the concept of change management still needs to evolve and mature in many organizations. Since agility impacts the entire company, such changes cannot be implemented selectively. Rather, the act of aligning itself to agile principles will in fact change the company continuously, efficiently and sustainably – and this change cuts right across every aspect of the organization.