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6 Essential pillars for an Agile Organisation

Culture change within an organization is a complex undertaking that requires deliberate effort and strategic planning. It cannot be left to chance or assumed to happen naturally over time. Knowing where to begin and understanding the key structures that shape day-to-day operations are crucial for initiating a successful cultural transformation. In this article, we delve into the main components that influence the work environment and introduce six fundamental pillars that lay the foundation for preparing a company for future change.

ARTICLE

6 Essential pillars for an Agile Organisation

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How do you drive cultural change within an organisation?

We often see companies trying to change their culture by investing large sums in developing new values or a culture guide etc. to create a corporate culture. They may even stick the values on the walls as a reminder to all employees or organise a series of workshops for all units so that they really take on board the new values. After six months, you may begin to wonder why you still haven’t achieved the cultural change you were hoping for. The point is that cultural change doesn’t happen by itself. To change the culture ofa company, you first need to critically examine and change the structures that affect the daily work of your employees. You need to re- view how you run your business, how you interact across the organisation, how you reward your employees’ work and how you organise and prioritise what is important. You need to adapt all these governance mechanisms to bring about a culture change and make things happen.

What is the definition of agile?

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, organizations face the constant challenge of meeting the needs and expectations of their various value recipients, including customers, owners, employees, and partners. Agility has emerged as a critical concept in addressing this challenge effectively.

There are different definitions, but for us agility is being able to see and understand the needs of the value recipient (customer, owner, employee, partner› and using this knowledge, being able and daring to change focus and direction, as well as priorities and activities, to maximize value in an effective way. In other words, it is about two things:

Recognise and understand the need for change
Ability to act based on this new

6 essential pillars of an agile organisation

In a complex and ever-changing world, many companies need to find a new way of doing business to remain successful. It is not enough to simply believe that a new way of working will do the trick, but you must be prepared to sacrifice a lot to really make a change that will allow your company to prepare for future changes and needs.

What are the challenges of an agile organisation?

It’s important for companies with a holistic approach to define what they want to achieve and for management to fully embrace and drive the change. The organizations I have seen where things are not working very well often live in two parallel worlds, i.e., some parts of the company are working agile while others are not. This usually means failing to align budgeting, managing financial performance, or monitoring employee performance in HR with the agile approach. The result is often friction and the risk of getting the worst of both worlds.

Conclusion

Where to start as a business?

As a company, you need to review your value creation processes and for whom you are creating value today. You also need to find a common understanding and belief in the beliefs of the management team and what you want to achieve. A shared vision and a clear purpose for change will go a long way. Next, you need to develop and evaluate options for setting up agile value streams and teams to deliver customer value in a changing environment in a better way than your current organization. Based on what is important specifically to optimize for your organization, there are many ways to build teams. However, one thing is for sure, ONE operating model will not solve ALL problems, so choose the one that optimizes against what is most important.

Once you have an overall vision, it‘s time to try out agile ways of working and let your organization get used to the new values, principles, methods, and tools that come with agile. Companies often launch agile gradually to apply the agile principle of testing, learning alon9 the way, and adjusting as needed.

We often see HR as a natural driver of agile transformation. An agile approach is often based on finding new cross-functional collaborations and thus breaking down existing functional silos between different parts of the organization. Since such change must involve many different (if not all) departments/divisions within a company, HR can act as the in- dependent party within the organization that can navigate the change journey and create a common platform for new ways of working.

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