Agility - The Skill You Want to Develop in 2010

I am creating a 2-day course called Change Ready Organizations that I will be delivering in Singapore in March. The class brings together several of the key methods and concepts that leaders have been responding to lately. This is especially true when is comes to creating AGILITY.

With all the complexity and drama and change and opportunity we all face, I think agility is a skill we all ought to endeavor to develop. The challenge to becoming an agile leader is two-fold.

First: Many of our barriers to being agile are inside us - they reside in our hearts and in our minds and have been cultivated over years of hard work and honing. The barriers are:

• the need to control
• fear
• low self-confidence (parading as an ego)
• expertise-itis

Most of us have healthy doses of these elements and they have served us pretty well over the years. Even so, these tendencies rob us of our ability to be more flexible, receptive, and responsive. And they drive our peers and employees bonkers.

The second key challenge to developing agility is that we don't realize what it means to be agile - the nitty gritty of BEING agile. Talking about change does not make one agile. Proposing ideas does not make one agile. Reorganizing does not make one agile. Changing the mission or mantra or guiding principle or strategic thrust - or whatever we are calling it these days - does not make one agile. Agility is the inclination and ability to shift how we do things, how we manage, how we lead, how we communicate, how we relate, how we lead meetings, how we manage performance, how we motivate others, how we do everything - as prompted by others. To be agile, we must give up things, stop doing things, change basic assumptions, and jump into each other's sandboxes.

I know many leaders who are happy to be agile when responding to THEIR ideas and THEIR notions for what needs to be changed. I see far fewer leaders demonstrate agility when ideas and changes are advocated by OTHERS. This second part is the essence of agility - anyone can be flexible when he/she is calling the shots.

These may seem like obvious examples, but skill and practice for adjusting how we respond to things requires a process of unlearning and relearning that will take care and time. Ifyour organization does any kind of leadership feedback survey or 360 degree instruments, I would recommend that you add a few questions that measure agility.

Many of the leaders I work with are hard working and well intended professionals and they say they want to be agile. And I am convinced that agility is a key skill and practice that all managers must have to excel in today's business climate. Do you agree? How will you develop a more agile style in 2010?

Comments

[Management Dissertation]

Whenever i see the post like your's i feel that there are still helpful people who share information for the help of others, it must be helpful for other's. thanx and good job.

[Indranil B]

Thanks for the valued posts, when we talk about management, I have found some underlying facts about the pain and agony of mid level managers of any CORPORATE....

I expect your expert comment on this...