Changing environments are more prevalent today than ever. Technological developments are spreading and affect almost every industry. What about the retail industry, which has been struggling for years (at least offline). Or the taxi industry, in which Tech startups suddenly appeared. New generations of employees also need new ways of working and different ways to develop and deploy skills. It is therefore not surprising that 'organizational agility', in addition to recruiting talent, is number 1 for many managers and owners as one of the main challenges for the coming years. Is your organization agile enough to handle the competition, regardless of where it comes from?

Agility versus change management

Peter Elverding, former chairman of DSM, said it years ago: 'companies that do not adapt die out like dinosaurs.' This has proven to be the hard truth, especially in retail. In the current economy, change is more or less the only constant factor that you as a company will have to deal with. But change is scary and we often have little confidence in the ability to change of ourselves and the company where we operate.

'Change management' is often looked at as a solution for changes in the market. But, change management is no longer sufficient. This implies that you can change through a streamlined process of reorganization or transformation and thus be able to function again in a (or new) situation for a short or longer period of time. In the current economy this is no longer the case. There is continuous development and change. Making yourself truly agile is not the same as applying good change management, it requires completely different strategic qualities.

TIPS to become agile

There is no proven strategic model for agility. Several roads lead to Rome. We would like to share with you a number of concrete tips that we have experienced in practice at Kenneth Smit.

An alert management of this time

We conclude that the top management of most companies still consists of men and/or women who are often well past middle age. Of course, that doesn't have to be a problem and there are certainly companies with younger managers. On average, this older age group is often less aware of all recent technological developments. In companies that have actually developed into agile organizations, we often see that in recent years young talented managers, in the direction of digital or Tech, have been added to top management to ensure that there is sufficient knowledge in-house in the most recent developments.

Build your network through quality

Particularly in business services, contracts are awarded on the basis of network and the trust that your relationship has in your company. So make sure that quality and offering solutions is number 1 in your strategy. This way you gain the trust of your relationship. Trust that will not be broken easily. Trust that ensures that your company has the opportunity to adapt if the market demands it, without having to immediately lose the battle. So invest in your organization's readiness for solutions and strengthen the relationship with your customers. The most successful companies of recent years do not only grow by acquiring new customers, but mainly by retaining and expanding existing customers.

Take a look at a digital marketing agency

There are some industries that have been more or less forced to be examples of agility for years. A good example is digital marketing agencies. Due to the extremely rapid development of the internet and social media, these companies are often fully agile and extremely agile. The owner of a medium-sized agency recently told us that in their business operations they assume that the organization has to be reinvented approximately every 6 months and that it has become a kind of 'sport' to keep anticipating where the market is going. and how the existing team can be prepared for this. So it is certainly worthwhile to take a look at such a type of agency.

Agile working with a flexible workforce

We have already paid attention to it from Kenneth Smit: agile working. Again, this is very important. To be agile you must have an organization that is characterized by efficiency and flexibility. Both in terms of working method, as well as in terms of personnel and organization. You often see that agile organizations work with a limited/short core team and further strengthen themselves with a flexible layer of specialists who can be called in. This way you can always be agile and offer a solution for your customer, regardless of the requested specialty. In that case, the permanent team that your organization has must be fairly broadly trained and, above all, understand well what is required in a continuously changing environment. When recruiting new people, pay less attention to the professional knowledge, but more to the agility and flexibility of the person.

Do you want to know whether your employees, strategies, current corporate culture and processes are in balance and do you want to make the organization resilient with strategic qualities? Then we would be happy to discuss your Business Improvement. Contact us.