Strategic Agility Helps Businesses Cope with Volatile Times
VUCA is a common acronym used to describe the current business landscape. It stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.With business in a constant state of flux, it makes sense to periodically reevaluate your plans and priorities. Strategic agility -- the ability to adapt to new circumstances -- is key to keeping your business as stable as possible in unstable times. Making a plan and sticking to it regardless of new variables is a great way to become the next Blockbuster or Circuit City -- and having strategic agility can prevent this from happening to you.Here are some great recent articles and blog posts that will help you learn more about the value of strategic agility and what it takes for your organization to become more agile.Strategic Agility: A Leadership Imperative for a Volatile World. Chief Executive: “Learn and fail. Forward-thinking leaders cultivate experiments knowing some meet objectives and others don’t. Failure can surface valuable lessons that otherwise would not have been discovered and is a worthy investment in future success. This explains Procter & Gamble’s famous mantra: fail fast, cheap and often.”Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It. Harvard Business Review: “Myth 2: Execution Means Sticking to the Plan...Unfortunately, no Gantt chart survives contact with reality. No plan can anticipate every event that might help or hinder a company trying to achieve its strategic objectives. Managers and employees at every level need to adapt to facts on the ground, surmount unexpected obstacles, and take advantage of fleeting opportunities. Strategy execution, as we define the term, consists of seizing opportunities that support the strategy while coordinating with other parts of the organization on an ongoing basis. When managers come up with creative solutions to unforeseen problems or run with unexpected opportunities, they are not undermining systematic implementation; they are demonstrating execution at its best.”Uncertain Times Call for Great Agility in Business. BusinessDay: “A further attribute of an agile business is relevant, effective innovation delivering improved pricing and increased value to customers. This innovation is incremental and collaborative and depends on the ability of the business to harness its resources to deliver value propositions that meet the changing needs of customers.”4 Components of Small Business Agility in a Diverse Market. Latin Business Today: “A small business leader hunkered down with a single minded focus is in danger of steering the boat right into trouble and not around it. Determination and focus are still highly desirable trait in business leadership but the leader who wants to succeed is the leader who knows how to make the right connections in a changing world.”Lead With Agility Not Lethargy. The Huffington Post: “Disruptive leadership may sound harsh to some. It certainly isn't anything to do with 'average', or the status quo, or any form of comfort zone leadership. It will definitely impact on your team. But it is about the positive rather than the negative. It isn't ruthless. It doesn't mean putting pure profit ahead of people and the short-term win ahead of long-term relationships. In fact, in many ways it's just the opposite of this because disrupters have an end-goal vision.”Contact us if you’d like to learn how we can help your organization’s leaders learn more about strategic agility and improve their other leadership competencies.Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.
