Business agility is the ability of the organization to adapt quickly to the changes in the market both internally as well as externally. It is a measure of the proactiveness and nimbleness of the organization to adapt and be flexible to the changes happening in and around the ecosystem. In today’s tough time’s businesses need to follow the agile philosophy and be customer-centric at the same time. The future is unpredictable, and with the ever-changing technology, it is the need of the hour to adapt and evolve as soon as possible. Employees in such organizations are more flexible, adaptive, and innovative.

This Transformation Tuesday, let us look at the difference between a traditional and an agile firm:

The objective of the firm

In traditional business, the focus is on making money whereas in agile progressive agile firms the focus is not on money-making. In agile firms, the focus is on delivery and customer-centricity.

Organization structure

The traditional business follows bureaucracy, it involves juniors working and reporting to the managers. Traditional organizations work like football teams where there is a coach who makes all the decisions about the strategy, about who will play when. All the decisions are communicated by the coach to the players in the team. In contrast, agile organizations, work as basketball teams where the coach is not on the field. All the decisions are made by the players on the ground and they are responsible for their decisions. Research says in traditional organizations 50% of the time is spent reporting what is done, what are they working on currently and what is the plan for future.

Team dynamics

In traditional organizations, teams work as silos. They do not work in coordination. They compete. In contrast, agile teams, interact easily with each other. They do not work as silos. Teams operate together as a network where information can flow in any direction. Teams in agile organizations work with the same connectivity, enthusiasm, and collaboration.

Human Resource as Machines

In traditional organizations, management considers employees as capital assets and try to control them and make them predictable. They also consider the organization as a machine. In contrast, agile organizations, value their employees and treat them with a lot of empathy. Agile organizations value every stakeholder in the system, including employees, clients and vendors, and other service providers.

Being agile is multi-dimensional, but the focus will always remain on creating value for all the stakeholders. Agile organizations have a network of teams that are empowered. They have processes that support rapid decisions and learning. They are technology-driven and people-centric organizations. In short, today’s scenario is pushing organizations to become more agile. As quoted by Bill Gates – “Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react and reinvent.”, organizations today need to focus on being agile to sustain and survive the competition.

Written & Compiled by Faber Mayuri