“Leaders who are unwilling to capsize their current world view, whether that be their mindset or their ideas of what was, what is, what can be, and how we will get there, will lack the necessary agility to avoid future irrelevance.”  -via The Changing Face of Modern Leadership

Permanence is an illusion, change is the constant.

Ours is a time of constant tension and disequilibrium as the pace, volatility and turbulence of change accelerates in often unpredictable and disruptive ways, expanding the dilemmas and uncertainties today’s leaders and organizations will and must face.

Agility and adaptability have become the new normal.

It is no longer just a matter of being willing to change, but having the agility to pivot and shift course as new data, new information, new learning and new knowledge makes itself available in response to a world experiencing these accelerated, turbulent and dynamic levels of change.

As the saying goes, what was true today, may no longer be true tomorrow.

What we have to begin to realize and recognize is that our organizations were built for and operated in a time of much greater stability. The steady pace of change allowed for more static, hierarchical structures and linear, stable processes that provided for more permanence and vertical alignment. Even strategy, planning, decision-making and organizational learning flowed out at a very different pace and scale.

Whereas, today’s agile organizations must still retain some semblance of stability, while still operating and moving in a much more dynamic manner at all levels of the system. We are seeing a swift shift from permanent and linear structures and processes, to the need for more transparent and networked ecosystems, where knowledge and learning flows cascade across all levels of the organization, allowing for greater autonomy and faster iterations towards the speed of decisions through enhanced feedback loops.

McKinsey&Company shares that “Such an agile operating model has the ability to quickly and efficiently reconfigure strategy, structure, processes, people, and technology toward value-creating and value-protecting opportunities. An agile organization thus adds velocity and adaptability to stability, creating a critical source of competitive advantage in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions.” For which McKinsey&Company adds…

“The agile organization is dawning as the new dominant organizational paradigm.”

In many ways, when considering our organizations as becoming more agile, we have to be aware of how we are building up the cognitive agility, strategic agility, and operational agility across the organizational system, in order to become more agile and adaptive.

Cognitive Agility – requires constant reflection upon our mental models and a willingness to examine our own leadership decisions, assumptions, and biases on an ongoing basis. Which also necessitates staying open to feedback, new learning and knowledge, as well as retaining a willingness to disrupt our own thinking upon our current realities and possible futures as new data and information makes itself available.

Strategic Agility – is defined on Google as the ability of an organization to “gain advantage by capitalizing on new innovations. If a new technological advancement is made,” an organization “with strategic agility is able to quickly take advantage of this change.” For which they add, is the organization’s “ability to remain fluid, changing and updating operations as innovations become available.” In other words, it is the ability to adapt quickly.

Operational Agility – is defined on Google as an organization’s “ability or capacity to find and seize opportunities to improve operations and processes, within a focused model.” As McKinsey&Company add, “putting in place systems to gather and share the information required to spot opportunities and building processes to translate priorities into focused action.”

Cognitive agility allows us as individuals, leaders and organizations to be open to new opportunities, new learning and new knowledge that can improve the efficiency, effectiveness and future relevance of those in the organization, as well as the organization itself. Once we are open to these opportunities, strategic agility allows us to search out and capitalize on those opportunities that allow our individuals and organizations to evolve and adapt into the future in a more efficient, effective and relevant manner. As we become open to and willing to search out and seize these new opportunities, operational agility provides the ability to create the systems and processes that turn those new opportunities into actual organizational realities.

In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), fast changing world, today’s leaders will need to engage all three abilities and agilities (cognitive, strategic, operational) to move more positively and relevantly into the future, as individuals and as organizations. For far too often, we have become so comfortable and enamored with the safety of the known, that the current chaos of modern times has uncovered a brittleness towards more agile and adaptive action and change, which we will need to overcome.

As the Center for Creative Leadership shares, “Organizations of the future will be more agile and adaptable, structured in open, dynamic and networked structures to facilitate innovation and change, and leaders would adopt a more consultative approach in driving direction, action and communication.”

For which McKinsey&Company adds, “Agile organizations consistently exhibit five trademarks. Which include a network of teams within a people-centered culture that operates in rapid learning and fast decision cycles enabled by technology, and a common purpose that co-creates value for all stakeholders.”

Especially in a world where yesterday’s disruption is today’s normal and tomorrow’s antiquated. We need individuals and organizations that can constantly adapt and remain agile to today’s new pace of change. Organizations that can grow and evolve in the midst of the tension and disequilibrium brought forth by today’s VUCA environments. And for those reasons, we just might be well to remember…

A beta world…

Very often requires a beta-mindset.