Published on 08/07/2015 | Strategy
Does your company sense changes in the market, respond to those changes, and adapt its approach accordingly? In order to do these things effectively, businesses need to be agile. Agility affects every aspect of your business, and it can mean the difference between being a leading company or a laggard in your industry.
A recent study by Accenture Strategy found that leading businesses have five common traits that define their agility. So how do you improve your responsiveness and agility to compete or maintain your status as a leader in your industry?
Here’s a list of the top five traits and a quick checklist of some key questions and points to consider if you want to improve your company’s agility.
1. Build diverse leadership teams
How do you ensure that your leadership team has diverse perspectives?
Actively seek leadership from outside of your industry
Include relevant staff from all levels of the organization in important discussions
Get outside perspectives to avoid creating an “echo chamber”
2. Prioritize strategic decisions
What are the top three strategic decisions that you need to make this year?
Don’t let tactical decisions get in the way of strategic work
Have the ability to distinguish between strategic decisions and operational decisions
Focus on the most urgent and important strategic issues
Separate strategic meetings from operational discussions to capitalize on leadership time and focus
3. Make quicker decisions
What steps have you taken in the last 36 months to accelerate decision-making and act quickly on those decisions?
Align senior leadership on critical topics so rapid decisions are achievable when issues arise
Make decisions at the appropriate levels and have the right people in the room to make those decisions
Delegate operational decisions to free up leaders to focus on critical strategic decisions
4. Embrace data and analytics
Do you know how your analytics strategy is tied to your business objectives?
Consider who has access to various types of data and adjust to serve the business better
Apply analytics where they have the biggest impact
5. Prepare your ecosystems to act quickly
How well do you manage relationships with different organizations within your ecosystem, and with those outside of your immediate value chain?
Strategically assess where and how you want to share elements of the value chain (through partnership and collaboration) to accelerate growth
Explore how sharing information with partners may change the industry landscape
Understand how technology changes are breaking down barriers between enterprises, and the impact that will have on your business.
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