Agility in Business
Everyone in the world is currently faced with a unique, completely unprecedented, and entirely unpredictable experience. COVID-19 has forced changes throughout the entire business world, making agility more important than ever. There are a lot of people in sales, leadership, management, and marketing that are going to have to pivot and adjust to the circumstances at hand, and ensure that they can approach these changes in the best way possible, without getting overwhelmed. That’s a key factor in agility. And while agility has taken on a whole new meaning in the short term, it also has long term implications. The ability to have an agile team and be agile as an individual is a top-five skill that organizations are hiring for today, and will continue to hire for in the future.
The Dichotomy of Agility
If you have a rigid mindset or way of doing things, it’s not going to support you in the future. Who knows what changes are ahead? When unexpected things happen, agility is the only thing that is going to get you through. A modern, master seller understands the dichotomy of agility. Being agile means moving quickly and making smart decisions with only partial information at hand, and pivoting when a pivot is required. But, it is also the ability to create balance with structure and consistency where allowable. In order to make agility work, you must have both.
A Hallmark of Agility
Strategic speed is being able to keep momentum as you move towards long term goals, but also being able to meet short term milestones in the process. Most organizations know that they need strategic speed, but they don’t have it, which makes sense because agility doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Some people like a very set structure with clear cut lines of demarcation, but that isn’t always available. If you look at the context of current world events, there is no clear cut line that could have been drawn in the past, or could be drawn now. Being able to pivot and adjust for long term goals while keeping your short term goals is one of the best things you can do to create an agile workplace.
Agility and Diversity
Many times when organizations or companies are hit with a situation in which agility is necessary, their first instinct is to diversify. There might be some things that you can do tho shift offerings, or figure out how to move things forward where you can, but diversification is a long term process. If you make too many short term decisions about how to diversify, you make bad decisions based on emotions instead of looking at long term strategy. Be cautious of mistaking diversity for agility, because they are not always the same thing.
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