At first a short explanation about the reason, why I use dogs as a featured image 🙂 Otherwise some of my visitors may think I’m mad 🙂
In fact, this was the start of my agile and digital journey 😉 During my surf sessions through the internet, I noticed that that the term agility was appearing more frequently. For being a curious man, it started to do some research. My results always were about dog topics 🙂
This is still the case, when one uses Agility as a search “Prompt” (Promt version 1.0 🙂 )
Have a look here (the results are in German, for my location is in Germany. Dog is Hund in German). Of course it was clear fr me, that this could not be correct, So I refined my search keywords, and I arrived in the area where I learned, gained intherest and even enthusiasm.
Now i’m a true-hearted agilits and innovator 🙂 Let’s start with the real topic.
Agile companies – Why agility?
In times of digitalisation, generational change and open hierarchies, many companies are facing the same challenge. The questions are: How can I adapt to these changes as a company? How can I take a successful step into the future and what expectations do employees have of my company?The challenge is to keep up with the competition. To adapt to the speed of a digital, fluid world that never stands still and to create a fair, trust-based environment for all employees. How do you achieve this? By thinking and acting beyond the boundaries of conventional leadership methods and management concepts. And this is where “agility” comes into play.
What makes a company agile?
Agility is the “mobility of organisations and people or in structures and processes” (Gabler). Agility in companies is a certain way of working that is characterised by the fact that companies react flexibly to events and requirements.
In contrast, traditional forms of organisation usually have fixed and planned processes and procedures. Annual plans are often drawn up and everyone involved adheres to the relatively rigid schedule in their roles (positions).
This is not the case in agile forms of organisation. Here, projects are repeatedly interrupted, reconsidered and adapted in the further course of action – always with a view to customer wishes and market requirements (Gabler).
Agile corporate cultures therefore avoid rigid hierarchies and quiet, solitary working methods. They rely on modern working environments that enable more communication and better collaboration between everyone. A development towards such a corporate culture naturally triggers a cultural change in the organisation and this must be accompanied.
Principles of the agile company – agile project management
Agile project management forms the core of an agile company. How projects are organized, planned and implemented must be adapted to our fast-paced, digitalized and open society. However, project management is all about responding to the existing values and processes in the company and shaping them in a transformational way.
Three key principles in agile project management are
1. sprints instead of strict annual planning: strict annual planning that is rigidly worked through can no longer work. Of course, there is still an annual plan, but in the form of annual goals. Agile project management relies on sprints. Sprints are time-based work phases with clear objectives that are implemented by teams on their own responsibility. The results are reported on regularly in the retrospective, feedback is obtained and the next sprint is planned.
2. personal responsibility instead of hierarchy: project management relies on permeable hierarchies that promote personal responsibility and ensure team responsibility. There are no more rigid positions. Employees work according to their strengths.
3. customer feedback instead of rigid processes: A methodical changeover is not enough to ensure the success of agile project management. It is also important to respond to customer feedback and to take the wishes of the target group seriously and actively involve them in project management.
The question that companies should ask themselves is not “Should we become agile?” It is “How can we become agile and live it?”
Agility is a mindset
In order to work out and develop these skills, the corporate culture must be right.
After all, only an intact, practised culture of trust enables agile working methods and is the cornerstone for agile corporate leadership and management.
By breaking away from traditional, hierarchical structures, new forms of team building and increased personal responsibility become possible.
It all starts with building a trust-based corporate culture
In order to be able to integrate agile working methods at all, it is essential to work on a corporate culture that is characterized by trust. A negative example shows why this is so important:
In one company, two departments were working on the development of the same product. Neither department knew what the other department was working on. Internal competitive pressure, poor communication and the resulting inadequate culture of trust, in which knowledge is power, prevented the transfer of knowledge within the company and thus successful cooperation.
However, the changes in the world of work demand exactly that: knowledge must be shared and made available. Employees must work together to keep the company competitive.
Crowd knowledge is crucial
The following points are characteristic of successful agile working methods
- The softening of rigid forms of hierarchy,
- This involves giving up management’s “positions of power”
- and thus, the assumption of more responsibility by employees.
Decision-making authority is therefore not dependent on position, but on the team and the respective project participants. This also means that
- communication channels within the company must be optimized,
- and there must be trust among employees and managers.
Personalities
The four personality types and their approaches to agility
In the Ricker & Pütz agility study, the different personality types of employees were analyzed in a cluster analysis in relation to their level of adaptability. This provides orientation for companies. Four personality types were identified that differ in their confidence for a successful future with changing framework conditions:
1. active innovators :
Look forward to challenges, are innovative and scrutinize changing customer needs think in a solution-oriented, positive way and enjoy tricky problems are enthusiastic about disruptive business models are in the minority in companies at 2.5%.
2. optimists (early adopters):
are confident about the future and have an awareness of necessary changes analyse customer needs and optimize the existing business model learn from mistakes, value sharing experiences and communicate transparent are not so rare in the company at 34%.
3. stable (early majority):
tend to be skeptical about the future and think everything is fine the way it isrely on the tried and tested and find change stressfuldo not share their knowledge and thus defend their position of powerare the largest group in companies with 34%
4. pessimists (laggards):
perceive change as a threat and do not believe in fundamental change through innovation only do what is necessary and do not invest in changing existing services see no point in sharing knowledge and thus defend their apparent position of power are in the minority with 16 % in the companies
Diffusion of Innovation Theory
Diffusion research examines how ideas are spread among groups of people. Diffusion goes beyond the two-step flow theory, centering on the conditions that increase or decrease the likelihood that an innovation, a new idea, product or practice, will be adopted by members of a given culture. In multi-step diffusion, the opinion leader still exerts a large influence on the behavior of individuals, called adopters, but there are also other intermediaries between the media and the audience’s decision-making. One intermediary is the change agent, someone who encourages an opinion leader to adopt or reject an innovation (Infante, Rancer, & Womack, 1997).
Innovations are not adopted by all individuals in a social system at the same time. Instead, they tend to adopt in a time sequence, and can be classified into adopter categories based upon how long it takes for them to begin using the new idea. Practically speaking, it’s very useful for a change agent to be able to identify which category certain individuals belong to, since the short-term goal of most change agents is to facilitate the adoption of an innovation. Adoption of a new idea is caused by human interaction through interpersonal networks. If the initial adopter of an innovation discusses it with two members of a given social system, and these two become adopters who pass the innovation along to two peers, and so on, the resulting distribution follows a binomial expansion. Expect adopter distributions to follow a bell-shaped curve over time (Rogers, 1971).Â
Measures to actively promote agile working methods in the company
- identify the different personality types: Find out who in the team has which needs.
- get everyone on board: this is achieved by strengthening the culture of trust and encouraging and promoting employees to contribute their own ideas. Actively ask for the opinions of your employees.
- create a positive feedback culture: agility means reacting quickly to mistakes and changing customer requirements. You can strengthen this process with feedback loops. With constructive criticism, employees lose the fear of extending their own responsibilities.
- create the path from management to inspiring leadership: strengthen your active innovators in their role model function so that they can inspire other employees with exciting new ideas. But be careful: leadership is not the exercise of a position of power but should encourage others to follow suit by setting a positive workplace culture.
- create creative and innovative workspaces: An environment in which employees feel comfortable and enjoy coming together to exchange ideas has a motivating effect. This can be achieved, for example, through a relaxed meeting atmosphere or relaxed seating arrangements. Methods such as playful brainstorming help even the most reserved employees to get more out of themselves.
