the agility code

"Why, despite all of our investments in our businesses  (you name it, we do it), do we still experience a lot more Wheel$pin than we should?"

 “Why, despite all of the Agile inspiration and insights we are now surrounded by, does Enterprise Agility remain as elusive as it has ever been for most leaders?"

Agility, or rather a lack of Agility. Or rather, a lack of understanding of the whole challenge, the whole problem and the whole solution of Agility, which is a complex operating system that most people over simplify.

• Agile is prone to a lot of misinterpretation.  Most people think that entrepreneurial start-ups are implicitly agile and large corporations implicitly aren't.  Wrong, that's a mental trap.
• Agility requires systems thinking, as an and-proposition of science and art, not over structured and not under structured,   tight and loose, all at the same time.
• Agility is a 3D challenge, not 2D which is where most people are unconsciously stuck, with an acute journey-orientation emerging as the 3rd and primary dimension of the challenge. 

The Agility Code, or rather the unbroken Agility Code. Or rather, a lack of understanding of the keys to unlock Agility beliefs, behaviors and results, enterprise wide and enterprise deep.

• Agile is an expanding universe of inspiration and insights, much of which is prone to being too academic, purist or old stuff re-sprayed as agile.  It is hard to differentiate the signal from the noise.
• Agile is a transaction-flow with your future and the challenge is to simultaneously understand the essence of that flow and the system of transactions.
• It is hard for CEOs to know where and how to start the journey to becoming more agile as an enterprise.   It requires architecting a breakthrough journey. 

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(See a Subset Below)

We used to say "cash is king".  Not any more.  Agility is king and cash is just a way of keeping score!

The essence of agility is a transaction-flow with your future, which I call Agile C2C: Conversation-Flow to Cash-Flow

The learning journey to mastery of anything complex is long and arduous, but it begins with a first step.  

There are 2 camps of teams, leaders and organizations.  The fragile majority and the agile minority.

The essence of the agility challenge is Agile C2C:  Conversation-Flow to Cash-Flow.  Where your conversation-flow goes, your cash-flow follows.

Agility is a 3D challenge, but the majority of leaders, teams and organizations are stuck in 2D, which is their comfort zone.  Accepting the demands of the 3rd dimension and stepping up to them is the first step.

The key is to diagnose the quantity, quality and cadence (QQC) of your conversation-flow and cash-flow and plan iterative treatment actions to experiment with.

At the heart of agility there are just 4 core concepts to understand and internalize.

Everyday Agile Leaders change their relationship with key attributes of agility, to change the trajectory of their conversation-flow, their cash-flow and their future.

These feed into the 5 attributes of agility to change your relationship with.  These become the basis for the 5 roles of everyday agile leaders. 

In particular, driving more conversation-flow about scenario thinking and planning is essential, to change their relationship with luck, which is the biggest attribute of agility.  Luck is where preparation meets opportunity kind of thing, and many teams and leaders are woefully under-prepared.

Ultimately, things gel into an intuition, instinct and wisdom about agility, achieving a progressive level of mastery which becomes a 6th sense.

Not least of all because agility is complex, most people massively over-simplify it.  Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) kind of thing, which can be the kiss of death!  Because there are 2 kinds of simple.  Stupid simplicity which ignores complexity and elegant simplicity which embeds complexity.

There are 7 barriers which keep the majority of leaders, teams and organizations locked up in fragility not breaking through to agility.

Taking an overly simple approach to agility results in us feeling overwhelmed and gridlocked, with too much to do and too little time.  The trick is to unlock the gridlock and reinvest progressively in getting more organized for agility.  Easier said then done as it requires architecting a breakthrough.

Everything comes together as an Agility Operating System comprising 13 component parts,  integrated, aligned and attuned for agility.

All adding up to a vehicle which is fit for the journey challenge, translating agile strategy and agile execution into traction, avoiding wheel-spin, on your desired trajectory of profitability & growth.

Enterprise Agility requires the adoption of the beliefs, behaviors and results of the Agility Operating System (AOS) framework, enterprise wide and enterprise deep, which is a transformation journey with 16 (4X4) success factors,  to be an off road vehicle which is fit for their journey challenge, constantly assessing, iterating and evolving.