Peter Taylor
Head of Global PMO and Author/Speaker
‘Business agile’ is the approach of providing greater flexibility and faster decision-making in the modern business world.
It is increasingly apparent that organisations now rely on faster levels of change. That means more projects and that, in turn, requires a closer connection between executive leaders and the project delivery community.
Leading executives, it seems, sometimes do too little about such business evolution and strategy implementation. They do not apply the appropriate level of attention to such critical organisational change, and often relegate sponsorship and leadership to lower management. While they get on with their day jobs they are, in fact, anything but business agile.
How to get fired at the C-level
A four-year study by LeadershipIQ.com identified a striking statistic after interviewing 1,087 board members from 286 public, private, business and healthcare organisations that fired, or otherwise forced out, their chief executive. The number one reason CEOs were fired was ‘mismanaging change’.
The consequences of a lack of business agility
Beyond potentially losing your job (at the C-level, anyway), the impact of not being business agile can be serious. The business can lose pace with competitors and market challengers, and even with rising regulatory compliance in some industries.
Business agility can only be achieved with a move towards more social project management, i.e. decentralised control and greater collaboration, supported by strong and engaged executives and a focused and accurate representation of the portfolio.
To be truly successful in delivering change, and therefore strategic intention achievement, every organisation must:
- Understand the reality of their change investment and the associated business and personal/individual impact
- Take up, willingly and effectively, the ownership of such change programmes at the C-level
- Invest in professional leadership for this change with skilled and experienced project sponsors and project managers
- And connect all the above three – in this case two out of three is bad!
The connection between executives, sponsors and project deliverers (utilising modern, social connection tools), gives a solid foundation for true ‘business agility’. This is the only effective way to manage at faster levels of organisational change, against which businesses need to deliver.