Agility for success
We should be worried about whether our organization (and ourselves) are able to respond with agility as or even before things happen.
We need to go beyond questions of risk and resilience.
Questions that we might ask (whether on the board, in management, or practitioners of any stripe) include:
- How will we know when things that might affect our organization are:
- Happening?
- About to happen?
- Possibly happening in the future?
- Not happening – especially when we had expected them?
- Will that knowledge be:
- Timely?
- Complete?
- Accurate?
- Are our systems:
- Able to provide the information we need when we need it?
- Able to change as our business needs to change, or are they inflexible? How fast can new or changed capabilities be added: minutes, hours, days, or weeks?
- Sufficiently secure amidst dynamic change?
- Do we have the ability to respond, whether to threats or opportunities:
- Promptly?
- Adequately?
- With confidence?
- Can we remain compliance and safe?
- Do we have a slow-as-molasses culture, or are decisions made at an appropriate speed, with appropriate quality information (not to slow, not too fast, but just right – the Goldilocks test)?
- Do we have stick-in-the-mud leaders and decision-makers who resist change?
- Do we have an organization structure that will resist or accommodate…
