Running a business has challenges around every corner. From bureaucracy that slows down processes to internal politics that prolong decision-making, there are many factors that can hold back your organization from reaching its full potential.
An agile business has the ability to quickly react to important changes and position itself to succeed in this ever-changing corporate world.
But what constitutes the “agile” label? What are some key ways to work towards attaining this moniker?
Here at Dale Carnegie, we’ve identified our key takeaways below:
What Is Organizational Agility?
According to a recent Forbes Insights survey of more than 1,000 C-level executives, 81% of executives consider agility to be the most important characteristic of a successful organization. Agility is all about the ability to pivot. Like steering a ship, it places a priority on being able to evaluate the surrounding environment, make decisions, and act on them in as efficient a way as possible.
In other words, how quickly can your services or products adjust to capitalize on the changing market trends?
Agile Organizations Use Data to Make Decisions
Agile organizations use a data-focused approach to guide their decisions and rely heavily on being proactive about the stressors around them. They ask the right questions, understand the direction they are currently moving, and make choices that impact that direction so that they stay on course with company goals and objectives.
Agile Organizations Build Agility into their Culture
An agile business is resilient and can withstand the ebb and flow of the market much better than a change-averse organization can. Having a culture that seeks out new information and embraces continuous change in a collaborative way to drive innovation promises to be the new competitive advantage.
3 Contributing Factors To Becoming an Agile Business
Achieving organizational agility takes time. It finds harmony between multiple factors to ultimately create a well-oiled machine that’s well prepared to face new challenges as they arise. In order to work effectively, agile organizations must be able to manage their capacity to make a decision and act on it.
There are three main categories which contribute to this:
1. Resilience
When handling stressors that affect your company, it’s important for leadership and staff to be resilient. This means maintaining a positive attitude and having the confidence that you are in control of your own destiny. Going back to the ship analogy, it takes a seasoned crew to be able to turn the vessel around during a storm. But if they’re confident in their abilities, and embrace the challenge rather than dwell on it. This momentous task all of a sudden become attainable!
2. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is another contributing factor to an agile organization. Being able to trust your team and process feedback will arm you to make the right decisions. Taking things a step further, refining the efficiency of your feedback loop will help maximize its effectiveness. Trust also fosters psychological safety, the backbone of a successful work environment. Leaders with strong emotional intelligence connect with their employees. They can build trusting relationships that encourage team members to contribute ideas and share perspectives.
3. Tools & Processes
Data plays an important role in an agile business’s overall strategy. As a leader, it’s paramount that you arm your team with the tools they need to effectively do their jobs. These tools make it possible to evaluate the effectiveness of certain processes. It’s about acknowledging that growth is an ever-evolving process. It requires constant innovation in order to refine, define, and redefine the best ways to improve the business. Agile organizations take insights and turn them into actionable results. It requires that leaders ask and listen intently to employees who identify obstacles to productivity and decision-making and take action to reduce or eliminate them.
Learn More About Dale Carnegie Agility Training
Interested in implementing some of the concepts we’ve listed above? We highly recommend Dale Carnegie of Orange County training. Our 2-hour workshop is designed to bring leaders together to discuss key competencies for organizational agility. After attending this course, your business will be well on its way to a more agile future, ready to address new challenges head-on with strategies proven to work.