Strategic Agility is the result
of the interplay between essentially three sets of capabilities,
or three set of forces.
One is around understanding the world around
you better in a more forward-looking way,
in a more sensitive way to the diversity
of inputs and to the rapidity of changes.
The second one is around the ability to redirect
resources toward opportunities or threats or in new
requirements to face new competition or whatever.
And the third one is really to act as a team
at the top of the organization and also to act
collectively in a committed way among the workers,
among the employees,
the middle managers,
toward implementing those decisions.
And it's really the integrated effect of O3
and the interdependency between O3 that drives strategic agility.
Strategic agility is particularly relevant
for companies that are exposed
to these
fast-happening challenges
where conditions are changing,
where technologies are changing,
and where they have been successful.
Because being successful quite often
means that you become strategically rigid.
If you take the first, strategic sensitivity,
you can think of it mainly as two dimensions.
One is
being better informed around the world,
about the world around you,
in a timely fashion, in an anticipatory fashion,
learning from sources that are not necessarily obvious,
like away from your clients and competitors to
different people in different fields of human activity.
And that's really the first aspect.
The second aspect, which is more difficult,
is also to be on the lookout for anomalies in your own operations.
So what is it that may signal something that you did not expect,
but that may turn out to be extremely important?
And time and time and time again,
we find that major catastrophe.
Just to take one example that we all remember is the
famous 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers in Manhattan
were preceded by a memo from a flying school in Texas,
which said there are 20-odd Saudi
young men taking flight lessons here.
And very strangely,
they are not interested in landing or takeoff.
That went to the FBI and nobody paid attention because the idea that
someone might fly a plane into these towers
and destroy them was just too far-fetched
for anyone in the U.S.
at the time.
Interestingly enough,
the Israeli,
when they were building their first skyscrapers
in Tel Aviv,
had actually role-played the attack of
an airliner against these skyscrapers.
So you have to be very sensitive to the anomalies.
The second dimension is,
again,
in principle,
very simple.
In reality, quite difficult.
It's being able to relocate resources from one activity to another.
It's being able to modify the budgets to draw resources into new
operations and not get stuck into inter-unit siloed rivalry where
budgets are set in stone and people get very defensive about them.
And it's not just budgets.
It's also the mobility of key people.
It's also the mobility of collective assets.
How do you manage brands?
How do you manage core technologies?
Car competencies and the like,
which are not very easy because,
again,
they are not very tangible.
And typically,
they don't belong to anyone in the organization per se.
Perhaps the brand does.
But car competencies seldom do.
And then the third dimension is around,
again,
the
need to work together,
to act together, not to fly apart.
And at the top,
this is really achieving unity within
the leadership group and collaboration.
Collaboration is what you cannot delegate.
Everyone in an organization will watch for the lack
of collaboration at the top and behave accordingly.
And collaboration at the top also reflects itself
into higher commitment of people down in the organization.
So you need really this.
And also the link to strategy.
You need the link back to strategy.
I was 30 years ago when
visiting an IBM plant in France
and asking line workers what they were doing.
And they were actually ramping up the
yield of a semiconductor operation.
And they told me they were able to relate
what they were doing.
They told me this contributes to the
strategy of IBM in the following way.
And these guys were right.
In most companies,
you ask the line worker how he contributes or how she contributes
to the strategy.
Most people don't know.
So this quality of understanding,
I think,
and again,
that's part of the integration.
The three dimensions,
you know,
the people working down the line and the
operations have to know about the strategic intent,
have to know about the strategic ambition,
have to know about what kind of strategic agility we need.
The people in the middle need to be able to be playful resources.
So it's really how do we work together and how
do we manage to integrate the three dimensions.
The three first things are going to depend on where you start from.
But generally speaking,
there is one big approach,
which is becoming more open to the outside,
open your strategy process to more inputs,
more influence,
be it
more inclusive internally,
more externally,
respond very active,
responsive.
That's one.
Open up.
The second one is really at the other end of the spectrum,
is to say,
you know, build a team at the top.
And it's not just,
you know,
being social and being friendly with each other.
It's create
real interdependencies.
So success has to become collective success.
And you avoid this one-on-one,
fragmented,
siloed relationships between the CEO and individual business units.
And then the third thing,
which also relates to the first two,
is
replace debate with dialogues.
Get people to talk and listen
rather than present and conclude.
I think that's very fundamental.
In most companies I see,
there is way too much discussion.
But
discussion is a debate.
It's an opposing discussion.
Who wins, who loses?
In a dialogue, a solution is jointly developed.
Everyone wins
and everyone can say, this is my solution.
Or at least I contributed to it.
So I think those three things are,
to me,
the most fundamental dimensions,
the most fundamental points.