The most significant competitive edge in today's digital economy is the speed with which a business can recognize and respond to its consumers' requirements. Its strength is its capacity to produce value in the shortest time possible, swiftly change and implement new strategies, and restructure to handle emerging possibilities better. To adapt to the problems arising in an organization's life, organizational agility is essential. Unfortunately, most firms' organizational structures, procedures, and cultures date back more than a century. They were designed for stability and control, not innovation, speed, or agility. Minor incremental adjustments to how firms manage, strategize, and execute are insufficient to stay competitive. This necessitates a leaner, more agile strategy, which requires large-scale changes that have a beneficial, long-term influence on the whole organization.

The 'dual operating system' is the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) approach to addressing the challenge of digital transformation. It leverages the existing hierarchy's stability and resources while implementing a value stream network that leverages an organization's need to develop and move forward. SAFe restores the second operating system by structuring and redesigning the company on the flow of value instead of traditional organizational silos. This approach enables businesses to develop and execute new ideas and deliver, operate, and support existing programs. Organizational agility as a skill is critical for putting the power of the second operating system to bear on the digital age's possibilities and risks. This article will explore the best practices for organizational agility.

Shared Objectives and Purpose

In a Lean-Agile organization, promoting growth requires a unified vision, purpose, and set of objectives. Naturally, members of an organization would feel personally and emotionally invested in their job when they are aware of and confident in a shared vision, stimulating creativity and supporting continuous improvement initiatives. Combining a shared goal with a flexible, dispersed approach to wealth generation enables Agile organizations to detect and capitalize on opportunities quickly. Individuals throughout the company regularly monitor and respond to changes in consumer preferences and the external environment. Agile organizations may also deploy resources flexibly and timely to the most required. They analyze the status of initiatives regularly and determine whether to ramp them up or shut them down. They use standardized, quick resource-allocation mechanisms to rapidly transfer people, technology, and cash across initiatives, out of lagging companies and into growth areas. At the organizational level, defining and aligning around common objectives and purpose is a collaborative process that necessitates the participation of those working on the task.

Servant Leadership

A Servant Leader is unconcerned about their position or authority. In truth, they are more concerned with the team than themselves and what the team can do for the firm and its consumers under perfect circumstances. This voluntary handover of authority not only makes team members feel more confident, but it also makes them feel accountable for the team's success, and they demonstrate the necessary dedication. Servant leadership is beneficial not just to employee morale but also to the organization's long-term viability. Leaders in Lean-Agile firms urge employees to operate in a team-oriented, customer-focused manner, reinforcing a culture that has been proven to be more lucrative in today's society. This leadership style is also vital for ensuring that teams are provided with an environment that facilitates the development of their skills. This means that they must have the advice, mentorship, and coaching they need to work independently.

Automating Operations and Procedures

To scale, an organization must simplify and automate and standardize its operations. Standardized working methods increase efficiency by enabling cooperation across value streams in an organization. For example, standardized meeting formats allow for the rapid execution of day-to-day operations. The same processes that work in manufacturing may be used to distribute IT services, allowing a company to respond faster and provide higher-quality goods and services. To have any possibility of optimizing its resources, the organization must simplify its operations. Today's businesses must deliver value quicker while retaining their products' quality, availability, and security. An organization can never achieve faster value delivery if it builds on an inflexible or complex value delivery infrastructure. Automation will be employed synergistically to minimize expenses such as decision-making time, personnel costs, and liability costs associated with a mismatch between the organization's expectations and its stakeholders.

Integrating Teams

It may be easier to take a siloed strategy and concentrate on specific elements of the value delivery pipeline, but this leads to disappointing results. It may not benefit one department to operate quicker or more efficiently if it burdens another. The outcomes reached by the service provider and service client will be affected unless a business works on its service holistically, not only in its pieces. Internal and external customers benefit from the effective and efficient management and dynamic integration of information and technology, organizational principles, rules and procedures, and stakeholders, all of which should be coordinated to produce a specific value that contributes to the greater goal. Integrating teams have a positive impact on the employees as well. They see a boost in their self-worth, coworkers, and other business stakeholders with whom they connect on a psychosocial level. Members of an organization who collaborate can produce significantly more value than those who operate alone. Collaboration necessitates a climate of trust. Inconsistencies occur in work and response to obstacles when participants provide erroneous information about a task. It is critical to establish a shared knowledge base to avoid such scenarios. Collaboration does not only apply to members of an organization; it also applies to customers, users, suppliers, and anybody else who is associated with your organization.

Communicational Agility

The ability of an organization to cooperate and communicate with each other gives it a competitive edge. This has been observed especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, which completely disrupted our lives. As governments took preventive measures, businesses had to serve their clients and customers online. Thus, we saw widespread adoption of technology. The 'Future of Work' has also been a hotly debated topic. Terms like 'work from home' and 'remote working' sit comfortably in our post-COVID vocabulary. Agile businesses strive to build work environments (both physical and virtual, for distant teams) where individuals can connect and cooperate even if they do not work together daily. They also foster situations in which people of various backgrounds may perform their best job (for example, providing suitable office space for those who need quiet for focused work and for those who need to meet through web-conferencing or in-person).

Role Flexibility

Individuals are employed to perform particular positions in conventional companies, expecting to advance vertically to more senior versions of those roles as they gain experience. Individuals are unable to explore positions and teams depending on their development objectives under this sort of structure; if they do not love their work or group and do not perceive prospects for progress, they depart in pursuit of a role better suited to them in another firm. Agile businesses operate as an open talent marketplace, with clear and available jobs, tasks, and projects. Workers are encouraged to move vertically and horizontally based on the knowledge, skills, and networks they wish to develop.

Developing a culture of self-development

Everyone in an Agile organization should be learning all the time. This key practice is not restricted in any way. The members must learn if the organization perceives a suitable fit for adopting new technology or a new working process. The finest and most relevant example is how a SAFe, agile team continues to release new versions of the solution they develop. Individuals actively devote effort to looking out ways to enhance their working methods. As new businesses from all sectors and backgrounds embrace SAFe, the Scaled Agile team must adapt to keep their solutions current and relevant to future customers. There is always something that the organization could do better, more efficiently, or faster. Encouraging continuous learning develops a culture of innovation and continual development, which improves the agility of your firm. Structured processes and instruments at the organizational level facilitate exchanging information gathered across the business through experimentation and experience. Finally, the article talked about flexibility in roles and positions as with smaller teams, and every member may have to perform diverse tasks. 

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Conclusion

This article explored the best practices for organizational agility that an enterprise can adopt. In summary, we looked at how having a shared purpose and objectives enables the organization members to work efficiently and effectively. Further, we also understood the importance of the concept of 'Servant Leadership.' Since Agile works in smaller teams and on shorter deadlines, roles such as the Release Train Engineer and the Scrum Master must employ the principles of 'Servant Leadership' in their day-to-day operations. Moreover, we discussed contemporary developments like the practice of automation and standardization. Such practices enable organizations to scale rapidly and economize costs. Apart from these technological changes, current trends favor integrating teams and moving away from the siloed approach. Furthermore, the teams in an agile organization must communicate with each other effectively. This underscores the need for an adequate communication infrastructure and rationalizing procedures. Most pertinently, organizations must deploy technological solutions to bridge physical gaps.

References

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/guidance-six-safe-practices-for-s-sized-teams/

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/organizational-agility/

https://blog.planview.com/18-practices-for-organizational-agility/

https://blog.seibert-media.com/2021/03/09/business-agility-with-safe/