9 tips to nurture agility in your organization

A few days ago, I was speaking to a group of senior leaders, and asked them “how did your company change its operations after the latest crisis?"

In summary, their answers were: “nothing much”…

Should we be really surprised? After all, 80% of people having suffered a heart-attack resume their previous lifestyle and die as soon as they feel good again. And so, why wouldn’t the proportion of companies failing to take lessons from severe crisis be similar?

The current economic situation is already unpredictable and the forecasts are rather alarming. Shouldn’t we brace our organizations for the next unexpected economic upheavals?

Here's 9 tips for you to do so:

Tip #1 - Let your team go to see how far they can go on their own

Which reminds me of why and how Herbert von Karajan (the most famous orchestra conductor ever) shifted from being highly directive in his first years to very empowering later on.

He was learning horse-riding. One day his trainer asked him to start practicing jumps. Karajan was petrified and recalls: “I had no clue how to lift such a big animal up in the air”. Anyway, he aligned the horse towards the obstacle, and the horse ran. Karajan was paralyzed with fear. What happened then?

The horse just jumped the obstacle, with Karajan on his back! And Karajan then realized:

“it’s all the same with an orchestra; they want to play beautifully together. All I have to do is let them perform as well as they can, and then manage them over the 2-3% gap to perfection!”

Doing the same with our teams does not only materialize the value a directive leadership style would miss, it also builds-up confidence amongst staff that they can go further and further by themselves.

Tip #2 - Cultivate the belief that 'we can win in any circumstance'

Heinz Landau, a former Chairman of Merck Thailand, provided a perfect example of such leadership when he wrote: “I am always telling my colleagues: ‘In every economic situation, no matter whether the economy is booming or whether the economy is shrinking, there are always companies who win market share and companies who lose market share. And we aim to be and will be among the ones that are winning market share.’”.

Tip #3 - Build genuine trust amongst your team-members

This is a difficult one! My diagnosis of executive teams usually reveals that trust is low between team-members.

They often acknowledge: “we don’t know much about others’ personal lives and aren’t so comfortable discussing them” and “we hesitate to tell a team-member when his or her performance is not up to level”.

The superior trust-level we need enables team-members to be authentic and vulnerable to each other, to ask for help whenever necessary, to provide unguarded feedback and to challenge each other on their ideas. An easy exercise to increase the trust-level in a team is to invite everyone to disclose (in a team-building setting) such information as

• 3 Life-milestones for me
• one of my big failures, and the lessons I learnt
• my little flaws that you should know!
• my strengths and weaknesses as a team-member

Tip #4 - Build team-players who drop the 'me' for the 'we'

Trust helps to “build team-players who drop the ‘me’ for the ‘we’”, as Phil Jackson said.

So does regular acknowledgement of team-work’s added value. And so does this simple question -“what would a great team-player do in this case?”- asked to our colleagues each time they have to make a decision impacting the team.

Tip #5 - Require people to think deeper and differently

After all, we are all paid to think! And doing it better than competitors obviously secures a formidable advantage.

Remember how Steve Jobs revived moribund Apple in 1997 by demanding fresh thinking throughout the organization. And how he showcased his belief with the hit-advertisement featuring Einstein, Picasso, Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon … and the voice-over,

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the trouble-makers (…) You can disagree with them. Glorify or vilify them. (…) About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Tip #6 - Value initiative, experiment and courage

“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships were built for; value initiative, experiment and courage”.

Did you hear the story of a high-level project director for an IT company, who managed the very costly development of a new software?

The launch was a catastrophe, and the CEO requested a meeting with him.

Shaking with fear, the director immediately asked: “So I am fired?” The CEO replied: “You must be joking! I just invested a fortune in your training, and you think I’d fire you?" "

Here people get killed only for not trying” could be a worthy slogan (if a bit strong)!

Tip #7 - Favor diversity

As obvious as often avoided.

In 2009, McKinsey found out that “companies with three or more female executives in the executive committee” were doing consistently better than companies without ladies at the top, across all performance-criteria assessed.

I don’t know yet many companies with significant gender diversity at executive level. Do you?

Tip #8 - Promote productive conflict

This tip is also unarguable! Discussing all sensitive, difficult issues leaves no unhealthy baggage and no lack of clarity in the team. We will have succeeded in this endeavor the day when colleagues rejoice at the occurrence of any disagreement, in the belief that it will yield higher-quality decisions and superior respect of each other.

Tip #9 - Probe business cases ruthlessly

We are all familiar with disappointment when we challenge budget-drafts, market-forecasts or the “worst case scenario” in a business plan, and find out they don’t withstand even the first round of our probing questions.

To facilitate more robust anticipation-work, the first step is a step-back… to confront reality and what can go wrong, with uncompromising objectivity. A ‘must have’ discipline, which also educates staff about ‘calculated risk-taking’.

Whilst those nine tips surely yield more agility in an organization, putting them all in practice is obviously stretching, fraught with ambiguities and even superficial contradictions (e.g. ‘trust’ vs. diversity’). Yet, leading an organization beyond the tensions of agility-growth shall pay back handsomely when the next crisis unleashes its uncertainties and the most agile players seize the underlying opportunities. “Pay now, play later; play now, pay later” wrote John C. Maxwell. So why not start the journey NOW?

Here's to your Greatness,

Jean-Francois Cousin 

Global Executive & Team Coach, MCC

Speaker, Author, Former Chairman of ICF Global Board