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EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
Agile companies are significantly better
performers compared to their peers.
The most agile companies in any one industry are, on
average, 2.7 times more successful than their peer
group. Agility is confirmed as a significant competitive
advantage and a key to success in a dynamic, digitally
transformed market environment.
Agile management is a guarantee for
entrepreneurial success.
Only 5% of the companies investigated manage aboveaverage
performance despite low agility. This underscores
the strong correlation between agility and performance,
demonstrating an acute need for action by
companies that have not yet introduced agile structures
and practices.
Agility is the organization’s capability to adapt
promptly, effectively and sustainably to achieve
performance advantages.
Agility is more than just being able to respond ad-hoc to
new situations. Agility contributes to success primarily
when it embraces all the dimensions of an organization’s
design: purpose and strategy, collaboration and operationallevel
activities, organizational structures, leadership
and people.
Transforming a company into an agile
organization is a long-term challenge.
Most importantly, it’s a challenge that takes
in every aspect of the organization.
The Agile Performer Index demonstrates that top-level
executives rate their company’s agility higher than do
people in middle management: a clear indication that
even when the move to greater agility is initiated by
C-level decisions, it is still imperative to engage and
inspire every level of the organization.
Contrary to expectations, digital maturity is
not the driving force for agile practice.
The highest degree of agility is achieved in the Travel
& Transportation and Professional Services industries.
At the bottom of the ranking are the Energy sector
and – lagging well behind – Financial Services. Telecommunications,
Media & Technology (TMT), an industry
that has experienced years of disruptive change
through digital transformation, ranks in the lower
midfield. Industries with greater digital maturity may
take a more critical view of their own agility, acknowledging
a need for change only when they experience
considerable pain and pressure by the competition.
An organizational “fitness test” determines
agility compared to competitors, and individual
heatmaps help to identify optimum points for
initiating change.
With the help of science-based analytics, an organization
can learn whether agility is already codified into its
business practices and, if not, which areas it can address
to become more agile – sustainably, efficiently and
continuously. After analyzing over 60 transformation
programs of well-known companies, goetzpartners
has developed four basic sets of measures – "fitness
programs" – to help organizations improve their agility
and therefore their performance.