Digitization may be necessary for the success of many companies, but in our increasingly complex context, what companies really need to do is create new forms of competitive advantage and transform for the future. And that requires fundamental changes in your top leaders, not just in people’s capabilities, but also in the way teams are run.
The report “2021 Business Agility Report: Rising to the Challenge” identified that leadership is the second most important challenge for the adoption of business agility faced most organizations.
As companies strive to create a competitive advantage, they find that what they need from their leaders is changing. Your top employees must be able to reinvent the company’s place in the world and transform the organization to live up to a more ambitious purpose. That means a fundamental change in the way they collectively manage and run the company.
It is clear that for companies to prosper in the years to come, they must create new forms of advantage rather than simply digitize what they are doing today. Accomplishing that means being prepared to shed past belief systems and define new and bolder value propositions. Leaders must be willing to challenge every aspect of their company: its purpose, its business model, its operating model, its people, and themselves. And conventional ideas about management have to be reversed.
Leaders must strive to be mindful of their leadership style and ensure they communicate a clear vision while acting consistently with their organization’s stated goals and methods. Successful leaders embed the concept of continuous improvement with their teams, build trust through empowerment, and celebrated failure as a learning opportunity.
The “Business Agility Institute” recommends the following in its annual report:
“Favor the optimization of the workflow through value flows and the cross-functional teams that support them, on the use of people. One of the main goals of business agility is to optimize workflow across different value streams. This is a key enabler in responding to customer and market needs and accelerating the feedback loop. Leveraging the concepts of Lean, leaders who had previously been incentivized to focus on maximizing the utilization of people will need support in understanding how to analyze and change their approach to enable workflow across teams. For example, introducing the necessary downtime for continuous improvement and reducing the backlog of work in progress. “
Finally, one of the great challenges in leadership and in companies is the mindset. The agile mindset is associated with a growth mindset, market experimentation, psychological safety, and continuous delivery of value.
Leaders who do not make a conscious and deliberate effort to drive culture change will likely see their organizational change fail as the workforce reverts to its old ways of working.
A change of mindset and a commitment to coaching and mentoring should be supported. Agile-minded coaching and mentoring should be provided at all levels of the organization, including professional coaches and individuals who have proven to be successful in key team support roles.
Matias Clavería, Delivery Manager
Matias is capable of optimizing and streamlining development processes in technology companies, generating an excellent work environment, and focused on people in the area. His assertive leadership style exemplifies conviction and teamwork with the ability to build strong long-term client relationships.
