- By: Mark Jakobsen
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THE IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS AGILITY IN AN UNPREDICTABLE WORLD
It’s been a funny old year, weatherwise, which in turn has had a knock-on effect with our gardening. With plants flowering at unexpected times, crops arriving outside their normal windows, and others producing bumper harvests, all thanks to unusual weather patterns. The heatwave we had early in the year, the sudden arrival of Autumn reminds me of a Monty Python sketch, keep reading to find out which one! Just as farmers and gardeners are having to adjust and adapt to the changing climate, businesses are also experiencing uncertainty regardless of the industries they are in. This places a greater emphasis on the need for business agility to be at the heart of your operations.
The unpredictability in the business world is being driven by several factors, from the usual, and standard shifts in the market and consumer behaviour to the uncertainty over tariffs, interest rates, climate change and the increased pace of digital transformation. It’s likely these will all impact your business. To survive, and to thrive, it’s becoming more important for a company to be able to pivot, which comes down to business agility.
Why Business Agility Matters in Uncertain Times
When you don’t know what’s around the corner, you need to have in place the means to adapt quickly to stay ahead of the game, regardless of whether it is internal or external. The ability to pivot becomes crucial, in steps business agility. In simplest terms business agility is the capability to quickly adapt to changing forces affecting your business.
For gardeners, they need to adjust when to plant their tomatoes, carrots or other crops. For you, it means having an agile framework in place to allow you to pivot faster, and more effectively. That’s because it provides you with:
- Faster decision-making
- Increased employee engagement
- Improved customer responsiveness
- Enhanced digital capabilities and faster technology adoption
- A culture that encourages innovation and continuous improvement (both individual and corporate)
- Better risk management
And most importantly, all of this combines into greater competitive advantage. It can be the difference between being an industry leader or lagging behind.
How to Build Business Agility into Your Company?
Once implemented the benefits are substantial, and to do it right you need to get to the core of your company. What does this look like? Take a look through the tabs below.
Yes, longer term plans are still critical to provide stability and the longer-term direction but when market forces are impacting your business on a quarterly, or monthly basis, there’s a need to shorten your review and adaption schedule.
Establish feedback loops to collect the right data from the right groups (customer insights, performance metrics, competitor movements) to track overall trends impacting your business. Then translate this into actionable strategy to stay relevant and responsive.
Empower your employees to make the decisions they need to, within clear boundaries, to reduce bottlenecks. And if a failure occurs, treat it as a learning opportunity. This will help to foster a growth mindset.
Invest in the right platforms, whether this is cloud infrastructure for easier collaboration, data analytics tools for insights, or sales and marketing automation tools to power growth. Don’t just focus on the right fit for today, look for the ones that will scale with you and integrate easily.
Is your business agility working?
If you’ve shifted to an agile mindset, how do you know if it’s working? Ask yourself if your business is blooming in all seasons, or is it only productive during perfect conditions? Look at whether:
- Your company can make decisions and implement changes faster than before
- Team morale and involvement has increased
- Customer satisfaction has increased
- You are experimenting more, and learning faster
- Your strategy is being revised regularly
- Your business performance has improved
It’s also important to remember that business agility is a continuous process, not a one off.
An ever-changing landscape
The market you’re selling into doesn’t care about your timescales, plans, or goals. It will have the annoying habit of changing direction just as you’ve set your strategy in motion. There will always be times when you need to pivot and adapt to what’s going on around you.
In a similar vein, Mother Nature works to her own timetables too, and we’re having to adapt our autumn foraging plans to her unpredictable schedule. Which does remind me what Monty Python said about the seasons in The Holy Grail…
winter decided to give spring and summer a miss and went straight to Autumn.
Unlike in the movies, businesses can’t skip the seasons. You need that spring preparation and summer growth to be ready for whatever autumn brings.
If your business is feeling the seasonal shift, and you’re ready to build resilience into your business strategy, let’s discuss how to future-proof your operations for whatever comes next.