Many organisations today are struggling to strike the right balance between remaining flexible enough to capitalise on rapid-fire strategic challenges and still being able to meet short and long-term financial numbers, says Frank Reinelt, senior director for Northern Europe & Emerging Markets at Mindjet.
The answer? Working in agile practices that will allow businesses to take incremental, more exploratory steps instead of one large, expensive, uncompromising strategy.
What is agile marketing?
Essentially, agile practices mean taking smaller steps and not being afraid of failure (and also not failing the same way twice!). They involve setting specific timings for a certain set of work and managing new tasks being produced by your team in an orderly fashion. Being agile also means testing ideas and using data to find out what’s working and what isn’t in terms of your business’ profitability.
This practice originated from the world of software development, where the focus is on putting the best customer and feature functionalities in place, as fast as possible, while retaining the ability to change direction when new opportunities present themselves.
This approach has become particularly prevalent over the past decade, where the new digital world required far greater adaptability than could be provided by older hierarchical or waterfall product cycles. Not only was this method taking too long, meaning it was becoming too expensive, but there was also a relevancy gap with customers because of the lengthy times-to-market.
So, while abandoned funding, changing platforms and the chronic threat of obsolescence felled so many software companies, agile businesses, with their super-short release cycles, constant reviews and smaller teams, survived.
Can agile and hierarchical practices co-exist?
John P. Kotter, Professor of Leadership Emeritus at Harvard Business School, confirms that the two practices can work together. In fact, he goes as far as suggesting that, for the future of business, the hierarchy must allow more agile approaches to develop.
Kotter says that companies that have matured beyond the start-up phase are optimised for efficiency, not the ability to take advantage of opportunities and avoid threats, something he calls “strategic agility”.
These more mature companies always tend to fail in the same way – they cannot speedily transform themselves in the face of a threat or an opportunity using a process that worked in the past. Agile management however, is very good at identifying threats and opportunities early enough to act on strategic initiatives.
So what is the solution to this self-reinforcing, hierarchical cycle? The answer is to develop a complementary agile management practice alongside, which Kotter refers to as “two systems operating in concert”.
This would involve a structural system, run by the traditional hierarchy, which manages daily demands, and an exploratory system, which is run as a connection of networks, is agile in its experimentation and continually questions the business, the industry and the organisation
Steps to establishing an agile component
According to Kotter, eight, non-sequential steps should be followed for traditional business to begin to develop an exploratory culture from within:
* Urgency is critical – the business opportunity or threat must be urgent enough to prompt action.
* Establish a guiding coalition – those wanting to become part of the new agile network must come from various departments and have broad levels of responsibility as well as authority within the hierarchy. This should also be a voluntary action, as structurally minded individuals will not see the value and will not enjoy a mandatory transition.
* Have a vision of your expectations – whatever the business opportunity, develop an idea of what you expect your explorations might uncover. Having a vision piques both interests and curiosity, and motivates the natural urge to know.
* Use your vision to gain buy-in – it is critical to communicate your vision in simple terms, not only to the rest of the agile group, but also to the organisation at large in order to get the backing needed.
* Empower broad-based action – the biggest weakness within a hierarchy is that all decision-making is relegated to the top echelons. An agile network removes these barriers and allows anyone to give their ideas and expertise, whilst still being managed by a guiding coalition.
* Celebrate small, visible, short-term wins – agile networks need to show value, and quickly. Choosing a smaller, more attainable initiative and doing it well will help build momentum.
* Don’t stop – agile is all about learning from mistakes and readjusting on the fly, so you need to push forward and not allow a pause for cultural or political resistance.
* Incorporate changes and lessons learned into the culture of the business as a whole. This is how the agile network can inform the hierarchy. When better methods or new opportunities arise, make sure the hierarchy is informed.
Agile management doesn’t necessarily provide the silver bullet that will hit the target against impossible odds. What it does do is retrain the modern workplace for improved vision, opportunity, response, inquiry, curiosity, inspired action and celebration, providing the opportunity to explore unknown ideas within a stable process that provides innovation with reliable levels of efficiency.