10
03
AGILITY AS A
COMPETITIVE FACTOR
Continuing with established, orthodox structures is no way to
head into an uncertain future that promises fast-paced bursts
of innovation and disruptive developments. Change is putting
every industry – from media, telecommunications and financial
services to energy and engineering – under enormous
pressure to succeed, creating an imperative to be more agile
across every design dimension.
Our research suggests that agile organizations are significantly
more successful than their competitors over the long term.
A comparison of agility levels with financial performance
reveals that the most agile companies are 2.7 times more
successful than the average of non-agile companies.
To obtain these insights, the companies surveyed were organized
by agility score 3) into quartiles. Top quartile firms
posted above-average performance seven out of the last 10
years (69%); those in the lowest quartile were able to outperform
their competition only 26% of the time. ||
The Agile Performer Index confirms:
Agility is key to being successful in a dynamic,
digitally transformed competitive environment.
AGILITY AND COMPANY PERFORMANCE
PERFORMANCE
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
26%
~2.7x
36%
44%
69%
n=129
0.1
0.0
4
3
2
1
X%
Performance: percentage of years profitability was above the industry median
AGILITY QUARTILE
3) The agility score is calculated based on a survey with over 40 questions, each with a possible score from 1 to 5. The answers are aggregated to the 14 agility factors with an equal weight for each
factor, which in turn are equally aggregated to the 4 agility routines maintaining the possible score from 1 to 5 for each routine. The sum of the 4 routines’ score is multiplied by 5 leading to a
total score ranging from 20 to 100. The potential minimum score of 20 is indexed to 0, scores higher than 20 continuously increase from 0 to 100.