PART 1

Agility as a wave, a movement, is in.

We will have Agility 1.0, 2.0… n.0 in quick succession as some market savvy consultant or business leader will have you believe that a new and trend is on the verge of sweeping the world of business that is a bit different from the prevalent knowledge and ways. Nothing goes as far as n.0 of course. Beyond 4.0, the world craves for something altogether ‘new’.

So who knows, it may be Veloci-tution 1.0, a giddy combination of velocity (speed is passé) and revolution. Evangelists for Veloci-tution will hold forth breathlessly about how it is not just about speed but direction too (‘because we could be headed anywhere that is nowhere’, a corny tagline that will be repeated ceaselessly with religious fervour) and that it is nothing short of a revolution in how we ‘dream and design for the future’ in an world beset with uncertainty.

There it is. All the keywords in. On cue, research will be reported, about having the courage to dismantle ‘what is’ and to make way for the new as a key attribute in leadership, and about how direction setting as the process (Process. Very important) of hitching the organisation to its ‘true north’ is the way to ride the perennial state of uncertainty. This will of course have to have that ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ free-flowing movement of alignment and will soon spawn a global wave of training and development interventions for organisations focusing on ‘TRUE NORTH is NOW’.

There will now be early movers on Veloci-tution and others who are the laggards. The latter are likely to feel left behind, suffer through a change management program, and grudgingly hop on to the bandwagon. This guilt will probably be accentuated by research from Harvard and a dumbed down summary of findings in HBR, leaving some to preen and feel superior and others to sigh and rue lost opportunities. By this time, Veloci-tution would have hit version 2.0 (perhaps even 3.0) and the hunt for the ‘next’ will have begun. Now the laggards will have the sweet but temporary joy of having leap-frogged to the most current version based on industry-wide checklists and the (optional) certifications offered by smart salesmen of the certification industry who know a trick or two about vanity massaging.

The bestsellers written to popularise Veloci-tution will a have a shortened life cycle as it makes way for the next wave. Actually, all categories of books on Veloci-tution will have their day under the sun: Cat. 1: That takes 250 pages to tell you that it is old wine in a new bottle; Cat. 2: The eager ushers of a Veloci-tution revolution; Cat. 3: The case histories of organisations that have successfully ‘navigated’ (a very important expression) the Veloci-tution; Cat. 4: The balanced accounts that take stock of the gains and the gaps; Cat. 5: A conceptual, academic-sounding text, replete with comparative analysis and loaded tables, accompanied by a companion handbook / field book; Cat. 6: Inter-disciplinary studies on the antecedents and implications of Veloci-tution; Cat. 7: Veloci-tution for Dummies, the simple everyman’s guide to a fulfilling venture (important to broad-base it rather than confine it to business), career and life; Cat. 8: Why Veloci-tution failed to deliver the goods, and other such that will set out to dent or demolish the global fascination with Veloci-tution and what can be done Cat. 9: Crystal-gazing into the next hot thing / breakthrough / cutting edge / brave new world.

Veloci-tution will of course spread far and wide thanks to social media, podcasts, blogs, seminars, symposia, T shirts, banners, badges, contests, and annual awards. It will have a short life on some university campuses bold enough to offer Masters programmes dedicated to Veloci-tution much like what happened with the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.

But, hey, this is not what I wanted to talk about really. I wanted to write a few lines on the ‘Agility wave’. I wanted to write a longer piece but will get to it maybe later. Some thoughts…

PART 2

To me it seems like an unacknowledged amalgam of Lean philosophy and Hi-Performance Work systems. It is not so much in its content as much as the context in which it is gaining ground that is interesting.

In my understanding, Lean is a philosophy that is customer-centric; starting with understanding customer needs, value-creation and addition is from a customer perspective. It calls for total system optimisation rather than at sub-system levels. It concerns itself with flow, rather than efficiency. Time is money and so it concerns itself with people, processes, facilities and overall systems design that helps unimpeded flow through end-to-end, the entire throughput chain. Thus, elimination of all forms of waste is an active, planned, researched activity through a systematic study of all processes. It thrives in a culture of ownership, learning, and continuous improvement.

High-performance work systems typically revolve around self-managed teams that are goals-focused, with members negotiating roles, goals and task accountabilities. They evolve their own processes to ensure team hygiene and manage conflicts. They are not encumbered by layers of management and decision making. Authority is devolved, and a learning focus ensures that competent members self-authorise and respond with agility. Peer feedback and negotiability helps keep members task-focused, but also stay mutually supportive.

Given the above short discussion, it is unclear where Agility as a ‘way’ is distinct meriting extensive attention. Is it too much of a stretch to extend what has been a buzzword in the IT world (Agile) into the broader realm of Management and spin it as the new ‘must and should’?

This is what I understand:

a. Newer technologies are emerging at a breathtaking pace, promising new products, experiences, sense-making tools to understand people and markets, and the world at large in ways never before envisaged.

b. We are now on a perpetual ‘high’ of something new that catches our fancy or a promise of something that can change our lives in big and small ways. This makes it hard for us to commit to anything, settle into anything, savour anything fully. Sensory overload is not transient but a more abiding state.

c. Gaining attention (mindshare as we have been re-educated) and ensuring ‘stickiness’ (again, a more visually representative idea of old fashioned ‘loyalty’) for products and services will be a huge challenge.

d. Innovation, therefore, is a key process to create the basis for a future.

e. Nimbleness and flexibility in everything we create and do will be important. Legacy is not anymore what belonged 50-60 years (or even further) ago, but just a few years ago. So an ability to let go of all that was near and dear to make way for something more contemporary and relevant may be essential. Is this the beginning of the end of attachment and sentimentality? What we value will need a shift from what we have to what helped create it. More importantly, what is it that we need to add to the current range of abilities?

f. New technology has also spawned a new class of (entre)techno-preneurs. They thrive on new ideas, new possibilities and connections, new products and markets and new visions for the world. They are passionate and impatient but know when to quit and move on to the next. They are not defeated because they learn. Will their organisations keep changing, morphing freely and frequently, organically responding to the rapidly changing technology and market landscape? Will they create something of lasting value? Or, will this question itself be seen as coming from an old, bygone era?

g. Energy, appetite, self-belief, and abilities are ingredients at the core that need attending to in a variety of ways in a system so that they are deployable as needed. Everything else is expendable, to be dismantled when it is not relevant or risks becoming a millstone.

h. Systems and process design will rest on an assumption of a short life and quick changeovers rather than a stretched-out timeline of the stable, steady, and repetitive run of a machine. They may need to be conceptualised as responsive and self-designing. Stability then, as we knew it, will have to be have a ‘refreshed’ meaning.

i. Structures that are hierarchical and breed silos, or where the over-hang of a hierarchical mindset ‘corrupts’ a more context-responsive organisation design will be the undoing of efforts towards agility. I refer to Agility here to describe a quality of a living entity rather than as a noun to connote some Management technology. This is an area where India has much work to do. A hierarchical mindset tends to get caught up with status and keeping the boss happy rather than serving the customer. All the jargon and buzzwords, the swankiest of offices and the corridor corner Coke vending machines do little to make headway in tackling this mindset. My colleague, Raghu Ananthanarayanan, says structures need to become infrastructure rather than an immutable tree of command and control, and of turf, status and privilege. It will not help for people to look up for instructions rather than look out for cues.

j. Personalising, and an excessive reliance on rapport and relationships rather than role engagement (in India, for instance) creates its own barriers to organisational agility. It comes in the way of clear boundaries, negotiating expectations, making demands, and communicating feedback on tasks. Taking tough role-based business decisions becomes caught in niceties and management of wounded egos and fractures in relationships even where there is nothing ‘personal’ about it. Some may argue that a tribal relationship centricity expedites work, but these tend to work in pockets and selectively rather than across the value chain in a reliable, predictable manner.

k. The typical Indian is risk-averse, comfortable in his overt conformance and in managing his needs through denial, postponing or displacement. Assertion doesn’t come easy and self-authorising and self-initiation is generally not exercised. He is sensitive to blame and accusations, prone to guilt and shame and protective of his place in his belonging systems. He doesn’t easily embrace one who asserts or demands and calls out when someone delivers short. In a nutshell, the Indian struggles with agency and self-empowered action.

l. Under these circumstances, we need a cultural revolution, an awakening to the task of inner transformation on a large scale to be at home with the challenge of agility that the workplace demands. Self-assured, contextually aware, and being able to define and re-define his role and shape a response to the dynamic networks he is plugged into will require significant investments in self- development, in fortifying character. He will need to be comfortable with not being a know-it-all, with knowing that no one has all the answers, and that the total picture is one that is shaped by the dialogue amongst those who see a partial picture from whatever vantage point they are located in. In light of the dynamicity of the context that we referred to earlier, this suggests an ongoing dialogue process that is essential where everyone has an eye out to the world ‘outside the system’ and is quickly able to share what is seen and translate this input into ‘asks and tasks’ within the system.

m. This points to a need for dialogue spaces that are beyond traditional meetings which people attend, a few participate and most wait for the summary and minutes of meeting. Linked to this is perhaps a need for facilitation skills across different media that can bring people together.

n. Agility presumes competence – at every level. This places a demand and a bar on individuals that may at times feel harsh. But one who is unwilling to invest in learning may have to accept the inevitable – being sidelined, walked over or left behind.

o. However, there is the other reality as well: not everyone can be at peak performance level all the time; mistakes can, do and will happen, and tears will be shed. Besides dialogue spaces discussed earlier, there will be need for emotional infrastructure and spaces for people to share and express themselves in a non-purposive setting. This can help underline the reality of members as human beings who bring their faculties along with their flaws.

p. An over-focus on agility runs the risk of making people feel they are on a treadmill without access to the controls. Once catapulted into the ever-changing system, will there be anything left in him to pursue interests, relationships, leisure? Will there be time for a pause to feel the breeze, to smell the flowers, to see the sun rise and set, to see the moon darken and light up, to go on that cruise to unwind and recoup and not to check a box in an aspirational checklist? What of dreams? Will there be space for personal dreams?

q. Inevitably, we will be confronted with the need to re-conceptualise what constitutes work, roles, adding value, and membership.

r. Technology-assisted HR will one more time redefine what its place is in the scheme of things. Will it wage a battle to preserve the soul of the enterprise as people and technology feed off each other to unleash a race against other people and organisations? As employment turns more and more to tenured contracts and task-based agreements, one will be hard pressed to describe who constitutes the core. Engagement in a context of work arrangements that are transient with entry and exit of people likely at increasing frequency will carry a greater flavour of bargains and appeasement. Expectations that come with intellectual challenge and potential rewards risk greater burn-outs and growing alienation of a mass of people who are alive to their limitations and are keen to trade off ambition for a more sedate, fulfilled existence.

s. There is a double tragedy that awaits. A vast number have lost the willingness to dream or act on them and remain content to be a response to the dreams and demands of someone else. Their passion keg is dry, and they overwork their heads to work their way. The other tragedy waiting to unfold is that for many, the cherished dreams intimately linked to a context are likely to be rendered unrealisable or meaningless as the world changes at a rate into something remotely imagined. HR will bear the consequences of this gap between the death of personal dreams and the struggle to fashion a new narrative of the self.

t. In EUM terms, as I see it, the Indian context presents a combination of UBP, URB and a moderate UMI. The USD and UPA are on the lower side, with the USD much more so. The focus on agility demands significant USD and UPA, at least a moderate URB and UMI and a low to moderate UBP. This on the face of it seems like a transformational challenge. Perhaps it is.

(For those curious about references to UBP, USD… it is shorthand that a small segment of readers will relate to. To know more, read a terrific new book by Ashok Malhotra, titled ‘Indian Managers and Organisations: Boons and Burdens‘)

Flame TAO, the consulting company I am associated with, has an abiding interest in understanding and shaping organisation culture. It believes that culture is a critical enabler of organisation outcomes. Over the years it has developed frameworks and tools for organisation design and development that is significantly influenced by Lean philosophy and principles.

In a world that celebrates ‘Agile’, Flame TAO’s expertise in working with organisation culture and organisation design may be the answer to whether something like Agile in an organisation becomes a passing fad or a more enduring way.

This article originally appeared on my LinkedIn page.