Building an Agile Workforce
Discover how to build an agile workforce using a Critical Thinking Framework and enable high-quality distributed decision-making across the enterprise.
Many large and complex organisations are pursuing agility in all its varied forms to adapt and respond to turbulent market conditions. Agile promises exceptional customer value at speed and scale and the potential rewards are vast.
A McKinsey study has demonstrated that highly successful agile transformations typically deliver around 30 percent gains in efficiency, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and operational performance; made the organisation five to ten times faster; and turbocharged innovation.i Yet agile transformations can be as difficult as they are transformational.
The essence of a successful agile transformation is reshaping the organisation as a network of high-performing teams able to respond effectively to unique circumstances. This type of high performing team enables the organisation to adapt and respond to new demands and customer trends with precision and unprecedented speed.
Successful agile transformations require a shift away from hierarchical bureaucratic-style leadership to agile teams who can make high-quality decisions quickly, otherwise known as distributed decision-making.
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The challenge of effective decision-making in agile transformation
In the transition to ‘becoming agile’, some senior executives are still leading decision-making for their organisations. This process is a legacy from bureaucratic-style leadership when decisions filtered down through organisations.
Senior executives who continue to find solutions for problems they are distant from, are impeding the potential gains from this iterative, organic and creative process. For an organisation to be truly agile, those closest to the problem must be empowered to create novel solutions.
For organisations undergoing agile transformation where distributed decision-making is occurring, decision-making can sometimes be perceived as ‘too agile’ and without sufficient rigor.
When self-organising teams are charged with improving customer value, they must also be upskilled and empowered to make effective decisions.
The many faces of agility
No longer the province of software developers, agile methodology drives continuous, incremental growth and change in large and complex organisations using small and frequent releases in project environments. Many agile transformations were well underway prior to the pandemic.ii
Agile methodology is also supported by agile ways of working. This approach enables cross-functional teams to work from home or in the office in a hybrid arrangement, which is made possible by technology, and has enabled collaboration across the world.
Another agile concept is agile on demand. This is a blended resourcing workforce strategy in project environments which combines permanent and contract consultants by enabling organisations to engage the right consultants, at the right price, at the right time.
While organisations are investing heavily in these areas to capitalise on the many benefits that agile can bring—such as enhanced speed to market by moving away from overly complex and bureaucratic processes—there are many challenges in achieving the outcomes that agile promises.
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An agile workforce requires distributed decision-making
At the heart of most successful Agile initiatives is high-quality and high-speed decision-making and the ability to respond effectively to unique circumstances, in an ever-evolving business environment. Agile methodologies are designed to enable this to occur, but sustained success requires an Agile Mindset.
Leaders and managers who successfully innovate and deliver exceptional value to customers are said to have an Agile Mindset. An Agile Mindset is a thought process that involves understanding, collaborating, learning and remaining flexible to achieve high performance results. Transparency, inspection and adaptation are key elements as well as a willingness to change, to seek and accept new inputs, to apply the new information to the current known situation and re-prioritise activities and time to ensure they’re aligned to strategy utilising the most up to date information.
Within agile environments, effective decision-making is no longer the exclusive domain of the Executive Leadership Team. Shifting from hierarchical, bureaucratic-style leadership to distributed decision-making puts pressure on the quality of day-to-day decisions that occur across the organisation and ongoing uncertainty means that many decisions must be made with incomplete information. Many executive leaders have honed their decision-making skills over time, whereas for those not previously responsible for decision-making, this is a developing skill.
To ensure an organisation is ‘future ready’, ‘agile’ and able to respond well to the rapid onset of change, individuals and teams need to have exceptional thinking capabilities.
Agility allows organisations to thrive in extremely dynamic environments. The crux of business agility is the ability to make informed decisions regularly and efficiently. In the other words, the decision-making process is agile.iii
WHITE PAPER
The three As in agile decision-making
Agility consists of three continuously running parts: anticipating changing demands from markets and customers, adapting goals and plans and accelerating execution of work.iv
Anticipate
Anticipate refers to the ability to identify and foresee demands, requirements, opportunities, threats, and changes. This means identifying changes in technology, shifts in consumer (or internal) demands, and fluctuations in markets that could cause a change to your business in the future. When teams anticipate and use data and insights to identify patterns and then turn those observations into action, they can respond early rather than frantically put out fires later.
Adapt
The ability to adapt is a cornerstone of agile decision-making. Adaptability is the skill to regularly decide when and how to change course and then efficiently implement those changes. An organisation that knows how to adapt will be able to quickly and decisively make changes to projects, priorities, resource allocation and timing to deliver the best possible business outcomes. Making decisions on these types of changes can be challenging for teams and organisations and relies on team-based critical thinking skills.
Accelerate
To achieve greater speed in execution, many companies focus on increasing the efficiency of work delivery. In the context of Agility, accelerating is the achievement of business outcomes through more focused execution. Teams can accelerate the delivery of work by moving obstacles out of the way and creating an environment in which your organisation can thrive.
Agile decision-making is the lever managers can pull to not only contribute to overall agility but ensure they can deliver the results expected of them.
To make agile decision-making a reality, teams need a framework that can be used across the enterprise to gather and distill information to make transparent and informed decisions in consistent ways on a recurring basis.
Using the Critical Thinking Framework to build an Agile Workforce
The Janellis Critical Thinking Framework and Decision Support Tool are designed to help individuals and teams successfully navigate complexity and uncertainty.
The 7-Step Process is simple, intuitive, and structured to drive outcomes, create alignment and enable agile and robust decision-making. It is used as a decision-making framework for individuals and cross-functional project teams across all layers of the organisation. It is most effective when used in collaboration with others to gain input and perspective.
The framework encompasses all the principles of good decision-making within Agile environments including Anticipation, Adaptation and Acceleration. The key outcomes of using the framework include:
- Gathering and separating all the facts and assumptions related to the project
- Distilling the information to identify patterns and gain insights
- Challenging assumptions and uncovering blind spots
- Generating new perspectives and unique insights within changing circumstances
- Aligning a diverse group of stakeholders on complex issues
- Building a shared view of the risks and opportunities
- Providing a more robust and objective approach to decision making
- Enabling a more agile and adaptive capacity to deal with change
- Re-calibrating and re-orienting strategy using real-time data
- Prioritising key activities to accelerate business outcomes
Embedding critical thinking across the enterprise will enable an agile workforce.
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Summary
The turbulent market conditions of the last few years have heightened the need for agile transformation in large and complex organisations. Consequently, companies have invested heavily in agile methodology, agile ways of working and agile people on demand. Empowering and upskilling all team members to use an enterprise-wide decision-making framework can embed exceptional thinking and deliver superior customer value as well as build an adaptive capacity and an Agile Mindset.
To participate in our current research on Critical Thinking and Decision-Making in an Agile environment, register your interest here.
Janellis will publish the key findings of our Research in a white paper and present them at a round-table session later this year.
To learn more about our capabilities in this area, visit:
Critical Thinking Accreditation Program
Executive Level Digital War Room
Embedding High-Quality Decision-Making across the Enterprise Roadmap
About Janellis
Janellis is a Management Consulting firm specialising in helping organisations execute their strategy and build resilience. This is done through three key practice areas of Project Delivery, Capability Uplift and Organisational Resilience.
Janellis helps organisations build resilience and deliver complex programs by uplifting capabilities in areas such as team-based critical thinking. Uplifting critical thinking skills relies on experiential and ‘learning by doing’ activities using scenarios. In response to COVID, Janellis has combined online learning and experiential learning through our Digital War Rooms and Virtual Labs. Our Master Facilitators enable experiential learning both in real-time and online using virtual tools where teams put into practice our tools and frameworks.
How Critical Thinking Skills Build Agility
“Team-based critical thinking allows us to be both agile and robust in our decision making, drawing upon the brains trust of the organisation”
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“Critical thinking skills are essential skills for our organisation when responding to the rapid onset of change”
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References
[i] McKinsey & Company. 2022. The impact of agility: How to shape your organization to compete | McKinsey. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-impact-of-agility-how-to-shape-your-organization-to-compete. [Accessed 31 August 2022].
[ii] Beck, Kent M.; Beedle, Mike; Bennekum, Arie van; Cockburn, Alistair; Cunningham, Ward; Fowler, Martin; Grenning, James; Highsmith, Jim; Hunt, Andy; Jeffries, Ron; Kern, Jon; Marick, Brian; Martin, R. C.; Mellor, Steve J.; Schwaber, Ken; Sutherland, Jeff; Thomas, Dave. “Manifesto for Agile Software Development”. 2013.
[iii] Rachelle Sanders. 2022. From Anticipation to Agile Decision-Making – Meisterplan. [ONLINE] Available at: https://meisterplan.com/blog/anticipation-agile-decision-making. [Accessed 21 October 2022].
[iv] Rachelle Sanders. 2022. From Anticipation to Agile Decision-Making – Meisterplan.
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