Challenges Facing Business Agility

In recent years, the barriers to entry in most markets have reduced significantly. Along with this, digital platforms make it easier for businesses to reach global audiences. As a result, starting a company and competing with large conglomerates is now possible.

While starting and growing a company is now much easier, so too is becoming obsolete. Technological advancements and increased investment in innovative ideas have increased the likelihood of disruptions significantly. This is why 60% of professionals indicate the market conditions in their industry are unpredictable (impactmybiz.com, 2020) or it’s currently being disrupted.

With increasing disruptions, businesses need to become agile to enjoy longevity. While agility is somewhat a buzzword in the business community, only a few organizations get it right. Unsurprisingly, data shows that the business agility of 71% of companies is low (impactmybiz.com, 2020)

If you want to enjoy continued growth and turn disruptions into opportunities, it’s vital to achieve maximum agility. Read on to learn about the primary challenges facing business agility and how you can overcome them.

1.    Lack of Leadership

Enterprise agility refers to an organization’s ability to react to change swiftly and use it as a means to create value. For this to happen, the company must be able to redirect priorities, people, and resources quickly.

Based on the agile operating model, there are five dimensions in which you must implement change to become agile. These include:

• Strategy- Creating and embedding a shared vision and purpose throughout the organization
• Structure- Develop a network of empowered teams
• Process- Learning cycles should be short and decisions made quickly
• People- Personnel needs to be dynamic and invested in the vision
• Technology- Invest in the latest technology to support your agile environment

As you can see, true business agility touches on every aspect and level of the organization. Therefore, it requires full support from senior leadership. Without their buy-in and support via decision-making and policy setting, even progressive managers will be powerless. Some of the ways in which leadership can impede agility efforts include:

• Treating the necessary adjustments as non-essential steps
• Not understanding the changes necessary
• Not participating in the change
• Setting wrong expectations which then spread to the whole company

To overcome this challenge, management needs to be conscious of the importance of agility, understand the necessary steps, and lead in implementing them.

2.    Lack of Strategy, Poor Management Systems and Processes

While buy-in from top-level management is vital, it’s not just about getting the go-ahead. An agile ecosystem can only be created by design. Therefore, assess your organization in relation to the five dimensions of agility.

With each, try and figure out what is needed and how best to achieve it. From there, develop a top to bottom strategy for achieving it. This will require policy setting to support your efforts as well as a readjustment of management systems and processes.

3.    Ineffective Collaboration Across Silos

While each member of the organization works towards one vision, some have completely varying roles. This often leads to the formation of silos among personnel with similar roles. Such departmental silos can enhance camaraderie and collaboration within each department.

However, if not well managed, they can become a big problem for the organization at large. This is because of a phenomenon known as the silo effect. It refers to a situation where teams or departments in an organization lack effective communication methods. As a result, productivity and collaboration at the organizational level are affected.

With collaboration being a key part of agility, it’s vital to counteract the silo effect. Here’s how to do this:

• Have open lines of communication that break hierarchical barriers, such as an online collaboration hub
• Have a clear mission
• Cross-team bonding activities

4.    Obstructive Corporate Culture, Customs, and Processes

Having a robust and positive corporate culture is great for a company. However, it will be an obstacle to increasing agility if it’s too rigid. This is because a key element of agility is embracing change. But before you can address this challenge, you must understand why it occurs:

i)                Fear of Change

Naturally, people love stability and predictability, and this is reflected in how organizations are run. This is why any new or unknown element appears to be hostile and is automatically opposed. So, as you introduce new ideas, try and identify potential causes of fear and address them.

When dealing with such issues, it’s not about giving directives. Instead, the process has to be empathetic and collaborative to minimize resistance.

ii)              Herd Behavior

As with any social setup, herd behavior is also present in companies. Therefore, identify suitable change agents across various departments. These should be individuals with a high degree of influence among their peers. Convince them of the need for change and get them to champion it. This way, you can ensure that herd behavior works in your favor.

5.    Weak or Missing Agile Tools

Modern businesses rely on technology in many areas, from marketing to accounting and, more importantly, communication. As such, without the right tools to support communication and collaboration, agility will remain a mere aspiration.

But here’s the thing. Technology is continuously evolving and improving, thus enhancing the level of agility you can achieve. Therefore, to remain competitive, it’s vital that you continuously invest in the best tools and systems for agility. Otherwise, efforts and investments in other areas will not yield the desired results.

6.    Bottlenecks

In simple terms, a bottleneck is anything that causes delays or interruptions in the workflow. It may be a tool, person, department, or process that’s not operating at optimum capacity. While it may be impossible to eliminate bottlenecks, keeping them at a minimum is crucial.

Some of the steps you can take to address bottlenecks include:

• Regularly review the organization for bottlenecks
• Add personnel and the necessary equipment to support the affected department
• Process work in batches

Change Is Never Easy

Business agility is all about preparing your company for change. To do this, you will need to change policies, processes, and culture, which is easier said than done. Therefore, you should expect challenges and resistance along the way. Fortunately, if you have the resolve and right strategy, you can overcome them all.

This is where Bodon Draiger comes into play. We help companies become agile through a host of services, including transformation navigation & leadership support, blueprint & design, executive & team coaching and workshops. So, get in touch with us today for expert professional-level support to achieve business agility.