Is your business operating model agile enough to navigate 2021?
2021 is set to be a year of hope after a devastating year which saw businesses scrambling to make sense of the ‘new normal’. But with hope comes transition and new ways of operating.
It’s no surprise, but as Mauro F. Guillén said in HBR “ the companies that are successfully navigating the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing recession have often pivoted to a business model that’s conducive to short-term survival, and long-term resilience and growth.”
And if you’re wondering how some businesses have managed to explode out of COVID with unimaginable gains in speed and productivity, you only have to look at their operating models and how they promote business agility.
What is an agile operating model?
Today, business processes need to be designed to withstand disruption, be scalable for growth, and be cost efficient.
An Agile Operating Model helps organisations connect strategy to the way their businesses are run by breaking down silos and engaging leaders and their teams in the design process and outcomes.
With business strategies having to adapt at breakneck speed over the past 12 months, having an operating model that can support this has been crucial for successfully navigating into the new normal.
Why are agile processes best for business agility?
In ADAPTOVATE’s article last year on Agile Transformation, we discussed three areas where agile process assist in the must haves of any transformation:
- Moving the culture – how people approach problems – Agile provides new ways to approach this.
- Organize around what needs to be one – understanding priorities – Agile models rethinks how organization is done.
- Alignment and transparency. Agile methodology promotes ongoing feedback and sharing of information with customers and stakeholders leading to far greater speed to market.
How to increase business agility
1. Agile Planning
Agile planning helps you drive delivery and realisation of business value faster by enabling flexible, transparent yet accountable planning in a constantly changing environment. Using an iterative approach, ADAPOTVATE helps businesses adopt a flexible and accountable planning process which provides a clear strategic narrative on organisational and team purpose and aligns objectives and key results across the organisation.
2. Agile Architecture
Agile architecture enables agile teams to deliver business value faster and iteratively by bringing together business and technology people, with end to end Agile enterprise architecture, to configure and deploy agile technology platforms and business process redesigns.
To navigate today’s challenges and meet constantly changing customer and stakeholder demands, teams need to be able to deliver using an iterative test and learn approach within the business and technology architecture.
Business agility themes for 2021
In a recent live discussion between Steve Walton, our principal in Melbourne and Alan Trivedi our project lead in Los Angeles, they discuss what they believe key themes of Agile will be in 2021. These included:
- Balance
- Strength
- Speed
- Co-ordination
This video is part of a short series called Agile Talks which you can watch on YouTube.
Adopting a more agile operating model can create transparency on what everyone is doing, what work is important and what needs to stop.
There are five key areas that should be actioned immediately to optimise your operating model to address budget cuts and move strongly into 2021.
- FOCUS ON SIMPLIFICATION
- VALUE PROPOSITION
- CUSTOMER PRESPECTIVE
- CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE
- PRIORITISE, PRIORITISE, PRIORITISE.
Read our recent article on how to optimise your operating model now to address budget cuts to find out more.
ADAPTOVATE bring business and technology teams together as partners to deliver value quickly to stakeholders and customers by adopting agile platforms that enable a new way of working across Business and Technology areas. We configure and deploy Agile technology platforms, with the objective to create an integrated platform for our clients to realise digital, cloud, AI and SaaS benefits.
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