Companies Need to Build Agility & Resilience into Their Business or Risk Being Left Behind
Technological innovation is playing a massive part in how businesses operate and indeed what it takes to be a leader in any given sector. With investors scrutinising performance like never before and the landscape of many industries changing at breakneck speed, many companies that ignore this change to continue to operate as they have for decades, risk being left behind by modern-day disruptors.
Despite the need for companies to remain agile to respond to keep pace with these industry disruptors, almost half of those asked have been slow to react to these new threats, with some even being completely passive. Where this stance is likely to be most keenly felt, however, will be on the balance sheet, as investors are much more likely to scrutinise poor performance since the crash of 2009.
STAYING PASSIVE ISN’T AN OPTION
Organisations who find themselves in this position cannot afford to ignore change, as their future existence could depend on it. Building agility and resilience into their businesses is key to being able to react quickly to changes in their industry, which means that ‘business as usual’ planning just won’t cut it any more when it comes to countering new industry threats and making the most of new opportunities that present themselves.
A RESILIENT AND ADAPTIVE MINDSET
The first change that needs to occur within an organisation is the will to change and embrace new ways of working. Accepting that the status quo within any given industry can change and that a company needs to be ready to respond quickly is a major step in the right direction. This change in philosophy involves being ready to make use of new tools, such as dynamic data analytics that provide insight into what customers what and where their concerns lie.
EFFECTIVE PLANNING
The next step that needs to be realised is a platform being created for a company to be able to demonstrate their agility and react if an industry crisis or polar shift were to occur. This involves targetted planning, to reshape how said companies operate and in many cases, this can require a radical alteration in strategy. However much resistance to change there is within an organisation to this change, the CEO needs to see it as an operational necessity and implement accordingly.
TAKING DECISIVE ACTION
Making data-driven decisions, interacting with stakeholders, stress-testing and taking a forensic view an organisation’s structure is the vital third step in a company’s journey to achieving agile transformation. Only by taking decisive action to legislate for future challenges and disruptors can a company accurately call itself agile, as expecting it to happen by itself will not achieve the necessary optimisations that need to take place.
IN SUMMARY
To stay competitive in this ultra-competitive, almost constantly changing business landscape that exists today, CEOs need to take the concept of agile transformation seriously can give it the necessary amount of focus. Only by stress-testing their business model in a range of possible scenarios can companies understand the likely impact that changes can have and how quickly they can respond to them.
In these uncertain times, CEOs must prepare themselves to compete in all kinds of new ways and reinvent themselves where necessary. Fail to do so and the chances are, they’ll eventually be overtaken by those who can and left behind for good.
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