Literature in the industry refers to “business agility” as a set of qualities of an organisation which allows it to rapidly respond to changes to both internal and external work environments, without losing momentum or the vision.
Adaptability, flexibility and balance are the three essential qualities to give continuity to the business agility.
Defining characteristics can be categorised in four operational pillars:
- in an organisation interactions between individuals and groups with similar ethics, along with unified long term goals, often translates into meetings, debates and brainstorming sessions; innovation factors are important to address adaptability and thus business agility;
- the co-evolution refers to the continuous progression of products, services and processes from which companies learn to continually evolve; this allows them to satisfy the ever-shifting requirements of the environment;
- self-organisation describes the spontaneous and unsupervised exchanges of ideas aimed at the decisional process, that lead to high levels of innovation. A strong level of maturity is necessary, both personal and as a group, in order to achieve success through self-organisation;
- the previous concepts are important when linked to the “border of chaos“, an area enclosed between randomness and lack of logic and an area that can be defined as “normality equilibrium”.
Organisations located in this area are able to shift and adapt to environment mutations through a combination of frequent interactions, co-evolution and self-organisation.
WHY DOES INTERLOGICA FIND BUSINESS AGILITY INTERESTING?
We understood how important it really is for companies that want to survive on the long term and operate in industries where evolution is rapid and continuous.
In this context, innovation becomes the keyword that allows companies to maintain agility over time.
Companies that don’t innovate and are based upon methods of “proven reliability” often find themselves to lose to competition because of their inability to adapt fast enough to changes in the environment.
In the Human Resources management we think that business agility reveals interesting aspects. Agility guarantees a pool of people with skills and capabilities able to answer rapidly and efficiently to changes through adequate processes and instruments.
Furthermore, agility marks a clear line in the definition of roles and lack of competitive advantages: normally, agile organisations follow a schedule based on short term competitive advantages, which will be achieved before moving on the next ones.
WHEN TO ADOPT BUSINESS AGILITY?
Often some companies show their business agility only in specific moments, only as a response to crisis.
Others have agility embedded in their structure and this makes them stronger and with better adaptability to the changes in the market, like Interlogica.
