The Agility Paradox

Agility can only survive with stability

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Agility has been on the rise for a number of years and many companies are becoming “agile” and promoting agility. But there are a number of obvious issues with this. Firstly, the concept of agile as a business process is not the same as agile thinking processes. And the more obvious issue is that agility operates with stability and vice versa. How can organisations differentiate and manage both these seemingly contrasting principles?

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We were asked by a large multinational to provide a proposal for a workshop and assessments for a group of senior leaders on agile mindset in early 2020. This came from the back of a conversation on assessments and where we put forward our agile mindset report. This itself came through some internal discussions: one from my review of the book “Neuroleadership” and adding various sections including deep dives into the brain and concepts such as Agile but also on the concept of being an agile person and an agile thinker.

What became clear as we progressed, was that we were talking about different things. First is the process of Agile, the systems, ideology, and how this is operationalized in businesses, and second is the concept of being agile: being flexible in thought and action and being able to adapt to ever changing circumstances. This is an easy trap to fall into because of the word agile, obviously. The bigger problem is that organizations think that by implementing agile processes is they become agile in mind and action. This does not happen. Agile as a process is designed to increase efficiency and make decision making more agile but it can, by itself, not change agile mindsets because this is related to personality. And we know personality is deeply imbedded within an individual (see box at end of article on stability and flexibility of personality traits).

What also became clear and paradoxical is that the process we went through to try to get this mandate (it fell through at the last minute) was not agile in the sense of what we think of as agile and many organizations are aspiring to, which are things like: flexible, dynamic, risk open, more spontaneous, etc. etc. We had meeting, after meeting, with different stakeholders, at different times, and our original proposal was beaten and squeezed into a more traditional classic workshop proposal. There were also other multiple hurdles to cross, such as getting the right references, for the right things, in the right areas, and getting listed in the supplier system. None of this unusual for a big corporation. But this is the precise point - this is vastly different to how, for example, startups function, which are often truly agile, innovative, risk open, etc., etc. So, we were in a paradoxical situation of providing a workshop on agile mindset, but this has been bashed into a standard corporate approach and the whole process of trying to get and sell this mandate was all far from agile and the people we had dealt with who were leading the agile implementation exhibited few of the traits of truly agile individuals or leaders, let alone the organization itself.

So, let’s disseminate this a little so we can understand what is and what is not possible, and what is and what is not desirable or avoidable for a major corporation. We also need to consider why do organizations and leaders want to be agile (spoiler it’s not just about agility) and the most obvious paradox that stability begets agility so you can’t be agile without being stable – do organizations understand this?

Knowing Agile vs. being agile