growing agility

47 Pages·2014·0.46 MB·English

GROWING

AGILITY
CONTENTS.
2 Introduction
4 Agility and change
6 Personal agility
8 Emotional agility
10 Acceptance and commitment therapy
12 Habits
14 Flexibility
18 Relationship agility
20 Resilience
22 Agility at scale
26 Organisational agility
27 Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity
28 Leadership agility
31 Strategic agility
34 Portfolio agility
35 IT Agility
36 BYOD and BMAD
38 Agile absoption
39 Innovating after failure
41 Spotting opportunities (and dangers)
44 Conclusion
45 Reading list
INTRODUCTION.
In business, you can’t predict and plan for every eventuality. What you
do have control over is how you will respond. That’s what growing agility
is about: becoming more flexible in your behaviour, and developing
your ability to dodge, jump, tackle or even pick yourself up after being
hit by those curveballs that work throws, whether it’s getting feedback
that’s hard to swallow, losing out on a promotion, or a failed project.
In ancient Greece, people told stories The ancient Greeks in our story who
about a fantastical creature known invented the myth of the centaur
as a centaur: half-man, half-horse, weren’t agile. But the horseback
with the strength of both combined. riders, the centaurs, were. They made
a mental leap and realised that they
It’s thought that the myth was born could harness the strength, speed and
when people saw horseback riders stamina of the horse for their own
for the first time. Because they’d needs, even though it hadn’t been
never had the idea to tame, train and done before. And as a result, they
ride a wild horse themselves, the ended up being elevated to mythical
concept of a person on horseback was status by their less innovative peers.
inconceivable. The centaur was their
attempt to interpret what they saw.
Why are we talking about a Greek
myth? Well, the figure of the
centaur taps into the heart of
why agility is important. It’s about
recognising and seizing opportunities
that others simply can’t see.
Growing Agility 2 Introduction
Centaurs reappeared many Agile
years later in the 1990s, with the
invention of centaur chess, where For some, agility will always be
players brought their sport to new synonymous with agile software
heights by playing in partnership development. While what we’re
with computers. Amateurs were talking about in Growing Agility
able to defeat grandmasters by has plenty in common with
combining the analytical power and agile, it’s not the same thing.
vast memory of a machine with the
human capacity for creative decision- While agile provides an approach
making and mental dexterity. to project management and
team structure, here we’re
Both kinds of centaurs show the looking at ideas to increase your
rewards that can be reaped by personal agility, the agility of
being agile enough to spot the your team, and the agility of the
opportunities offered by new ideas, organisation you work for.
emerging technology or change,
and taking advantage of them
swiftly. In our working lives, we
should all aim for the kind of agility
exemplified by the centaurs.
Growing Agility is the fourth book about how to collaborate more
in Nokia’s Smarter Everyday series: efficiently; in Growing Agility we
in Design Your Day1 we looked at will build on all these themes.
how to employ design thinking to
improve your productivity; Mobile Over the course of this book, we’ll look
Mastery2 was about how to forge at how you can become more agile on
a mindful, purposeful and playful a personal and emotional level, and
relationship with the technology also at how you can scale those ideas
in your life; Teams That Flow3 was up to teams and whole organisations.
1 Design Your Day, Nokia,
http://nokia.ly/DYDebook
2 Mobile Mastery, Nokia, 3 Teams That Flow, Nokia,
http://nokia.ly/MMebook, http://nokia.ly/TTFebook

Growing Agility 3 IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn
Agility and change.
Change is the catalyst for agility. Without change throwing obstacles in
our path, there’s no need to be nimble, light and able to react quickly.
At present, the pace of change Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the
feels relentless – new technology term ‘antifragile’ to describe this
has changed our working quality of being strengthened by
lives beyond recognition and change. In his book Antifragile: Things
disrupted whole industries. That Gain From Disorder he writes:
Many of us like to think that change “Some things benefit from shocks;
is rare - we feel like it should be a they thrive and grow when
one-off event, with a beginning and exposed to volatility, randomness,
an end. The reality is that change disorder, and stressors, and love
is a constant state - nothing stays adventure, risk, and uncertainty.
the same forever. If this seems Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of
daunting, agility is your friend. the phenomenon, there is no
word for the exact opposite of
Knowing that you are agile - that fragile. Let us call it antifragile.
you can react quickly and accurately Antifragility is beyond resilience
- makes change less intimidating. or robustness. The resilient
resists shocks and stays the same;
Agility is liberating and makes you the antifragile gets better.”4
stronger. With agility, the things
you can’t see over the horizon,
the obstacle in your path, the
new discoveries, are sources
of opportunity and excitement,
rather than things to fear.
4 Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

Growing Agility 4 Introduction
But becoming more agile is a
change in itself. So how can you
make change easier to swallow?
McKinsey suggests that the following
four things can make change
easier on a psychological level:
1. Purpose 3. Time and practice
When you act in a way that doesn’t We can’t change instantly, it takes
fit your beliefs, you experience time and practice. To change, you
something called ‘cognitive need to absorb new information in
dissonance’. Cognitive dissonance chunks, test it out, and integrate
is an enemy of change, because it with your existing behaviour.
it means you don’t fully believe
in what you’re doing. To make 4. Role models
change stick, you need to have Having role models around
a ‘story’ that rings true to you you, particularly at work, can
about why you should change. In help changes to stick, by
this book, we’ll try and tell you a providing tangible proof
story about why becoming more that change is possible.5
agile is a change worth making.
“In any moment of decision, the best
2. Reinforcement and reward thing you can do is the right thing. The
You’re more likely to adopt a worst thing you can do is nothing.”
new behaviour if it is rewarded Theodore Roosevelt
and reinforced through things
like goals, targets and rewards.
However, we like novelty too,
and over time rewards and
reinforcements get boring and
become less effective. Coming up
with new goals and rewards will help
you maintain a change over time.
5 Emily Lawson and Colin Price,
‘The psychology of change management’,
McKinsey Quarterly, http://nokia.ly/1guJceG
Growing Agility 5 IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn
PERSONAL AGILITY.
Agility starts with you, and personal agility is your ability to react to
the world around you in a timely and appropriate way.

Being more agile on a personal level In this section, we’re going to look at
has a number of advantages. It leaves how to achieve this. We’ll cover:
you better able to react to change,
take advantage of opportunities and • Emotional agility
protect yourself from threats. It can • Habits
also make you feel happier and more • Flexibility
satisfied, because being agile is about • Relationship agility
taking control of situations that might • Resilience
otherwise leave you feeling powerless
and stressed.
Emotional agility.
At its core, emotional agility is about knowing yourself, and developing a greater
level of control over your feelings and reactions.
With greater emotional agility you However, work is emotional - success
can maximise your confidence, turn in business can feel just as great as it
negative emotions into positive does in your personal life, and failure
thoughts and access humility that and disappointment can be just as
you might not know you’re capable of. bitter. The answer isn’t to block out
Emotional agility isn’t just valuable in these feelings - it’s to approach them
your personal life though; it’s one of in an agile way.
the most valuable business skills that
you can possess. Every decision you make throughout
the day is motivated not just by the
Traditionally, a lot of people think of things you observe, but also by your
the workplace as somewhere where unique subconscious inclinations,
emotions shouldn’t come into play, the so called ‘gut feelings’ that have
and some of us even pride ourselves defined many great business leaders.
on being emotionless at work.
Sometimes gut feelings can be
trusted to point the way, and other
times the best course is to ignore
those feelings and focus on the facts.
That’s when emotional agility comes
into play.
9.00 18.00
Growing Agility 77 Personal agility
In an article for the Harvard Business Review, Susan David and Christina Congleton
outline a simple method for evaluating your level of emotional agility:
1. Choose a situation in your working day that would normally challenge you.
This could be anything from public speaking to negotiating contractual terms
- any task that makes you feel under pressure.

2. Identify the thoughts that come into your head in that situation -
for example ‘I’m going to make a mistake’ or ‘I’m not being respected’.

3. Identify the associated feelings that come with those thoughts -
for example ‘fear’ or ‘anger’.

4. Ask yourself how much you try to make that thought and the associated
feelings go away - a lot, or not all?

5. Ask yourself the extent to which you buy into and believe those thoughts
and feelings - a lot, or not at all?6

6 Susan David and Christina Congleton,
‘Emotional Agility’, Harvard Business Review,
http://nokia.ly/18o3bc8
Growing Agility 8 Personal agility
Look at your answers to these It’s normal and healthy to feel
questions. Are you trying to ignore emotions at work - trying to ignore
your thoughts and feelings? Are you those feelings is counter-productive.
buying into them? If the answer is yes, Emotions are the result of the
you could benefit from being more situations we find ourselves in; rather
emotionally agile. than suppressing your emotions you
should make an effort to acknowledge
Being more emotionally agile means them instead. Take a brief pause to
being mindful of your thoughts and listen to what your brain is telling you,
feelings, and addressing them in a and then take action accordingly.
purposeful way, rather than ignoring
them, or obsessing over them. When If negative thoughts dominate your
you achieve emotional agility, you’ll mind, rather than forcing yourself
find that it can help to cut your to ignore them you may benefit
levels of stress and improve your from a brief pause to realign your
performance at work. perspective. Consider how much of
that emotion is based on objective
The trick to being emotionally agile facts, rather than assumptions, and
is not to try and suppress your inner how much of the matter is within your
thoughts and instincts, or to accept control. Try to see the reality of the
them unquestioningly. Instead, when issue more clearly, and approach it
we display emotional agility, we are with calm, assured logic.
analytical, goal-focussed, and in
possession of total clarity - unclouded Being able to take the reins of your
by the inner monologue of ‘I’m not emotions and swiftly check any
good enough to do this’, or ‘my negative patterns before they take
colleagues are ignoring me’. charge will allow you to be more
productive, driven, healthy, and above
all, happy in your daily life.
Growing Agility 99 Personal agility