How to Encourage Leadership to Promote Organizational Agility by Example
How agile is your organization? How do the leaders within your company impact its capacity to adapt to change? The answer may surprise you. Organizational agility is defined as a company’s ability to successfully change or adjust rapidly; whether that be in response to shifts in industry or a need to implement new ideas and solve problems. Structure, work processes, culture, and leadership play an integral role in developing a truly agile organization. And agility has proven to be necessary for both longevity and success.
To truly encourage organizational agility, you do not need managers, you need leaders. An organization is immensely impacted by the attitudes and behaviors of its leaders; they play a direct role in company performance and organizational agility. Encouraging leaders to show transparency within their work, alongside prioritization of company values, helps employees to better understand not only their own specific role, but their role and worth within the greater structure. This promotes both value and trust within the organization, and within leadership. Trust breeds empowerment and drive, which allows for quicker, more stable decision making and the ability to view change as an opportunity, rather than a threat.
This trust is especially vital when you need your team to pivot. Leaders who are given a secure range of autonomy to make quick, efficient decisions can set the tone for the pace of the company and earn the trust of their employees more quickly. After all, employees are assigned a manager, but they choose who to follow. Employees are more willing to adapt to change when they are led by someone who is accountable, engaged, and has taken the time to understand who they are, and their role within the organization. If a manager knows a direct report well, strengthening the relationship between a manager and a direct report improves collaboration and makes room for innovation; both necessary when considering organizational agility.
Leading with tact and a level of personability helps to maintain the human element within your company. Leaders who have a broad base of industry knowledge combined with an impassioned drive to keep the organization moving forward yield the best results in terms of stabilizing uncertainty during periods of rapid change. When leaders truly lead and make decisions from a clear set of company values, the culture within your team works is enriched. Growth and improvement becomes inevitable, even among mistakes. We have proven how continuing employee education, and even possible changes in roles, can increase productivity within an organization, and agility, in direct relation, enables employees to work across functions more fluidly, with the use of techniques, technologies, coaching, advanced training and professional development paths (Forbes).
Organizational agility is not one size fits all. There is no one specific recipe for organizational agility that will give you the desired outcomes for your company. While this can be challenging initially, it provides the autonomy to determine how to best cultivate leaders who will promote an agile mindset with their actions, instead of words (or lengthy emails). Embracing a growth mindset and fostering a positive attitude over changes will have a positive trickle-down effect throughout your organization. Showing your team how you can personally adapt and change quickly and efficiently, empowers them to do the same, creating a culture of employees who are motivated by leaders invested in core company values and goals. Win-win-win.
