What do we mean by Agility? Simply put, it is the ability for your business to change and adapt to market forces at speed. It is commonly accepted now that with the pace of change across the political, economic, social, technological and environmental landscape, a 5 year plan won’t stand the test of time if not reviewed and adjusted and even sometimes even rebuilt every 3 to 6 months. The challenge that most businesses face, however, is that their traditional structure is by default built up to promote surety and minimise risk rather than promote change and innovation.
Management hierarchies have been designed to draw in information and pass down instruction in linear ways focussing on specialised functions. A board has united the views and demands of the different functions and then made the key decisions and rolled out the plan. The problem is that this set-up is simply not fit for the pace of change around us and the emerging models that threaten to eat the traditional pie. Instead, cross functional teams need to focus and react to customer needs in the now rather than just passing the baton from product development, to marketing, to sales, to customer support. To innovate, teams need to open themselves up to outside thinking from different viewpoints, skills and people of different bias. To move at pace, information needs to be pushed to the edge and your workforce empowered to trial and adopt change.
So how do we change?
We believe this is where Design Thinking techniques really come into their own, facilitating processes to help break down these barriers, unify teams, uncover new insights, new ideas and facilitate change. But first we need to tackle things that stifle innovation and freedom of expression:
- Silos – your department, job role, pigeon hole or assumed positions on certain topics
- Hierarchy – a worry about being judged by someone higher up the company that may damage your current or future prospects
- Privilege or prejudice – a feeling your say or another’s say is not as important due to looks, age, ethnicity, sexuality, health conditions or impairments
- Experience – a concern to come forward with your ideas due to a perceived lack of experience versus others in a room
- Introversy – differing levels of concern about speaking up in a team environment which in turn leads to the loudest voices normally dictating the day
All of these influences contribute in some way to stifle potential, new ideas, reduce team performance and prevent innovation within an organisation. Our goal at Room 42 is to help facilitate the removal of as many of these barriers as we can before then taking teams through a systematic and repeatable process designed to uncover new insights, ideas, unify direction and build advocacy for targeted change.
In this ever changing world the old building blocks of command and control, pushed messaging and silo based goals and objectives are being increasingly replaced with three simple building blocks for success:
- Purpose – a simple unifying truth or set of truths around why you are your here and what you stand for
- Behaviour – Your actions speak louder than words and this has never been more true than in this day and age where brand trust is hard earned and easily lost
- Agility – the ability for your business to change and adapt to market forces at speed
How does your organisation map against these more contemporary building blocks? Where are you on the journey to become more agile? Do you encourage problem solving across your departments? How incentivised are your teams to try new things? How do you reward success and deal with failure? Do you struggle to implement change at pace? Room 42 is here to help you find your direction and fast track your journey towards becoming a more contemporary, innovative and resilient version of yourself.
Read more about our approach and full range of programmes.
To enquire about our programmes simply email knock@room42.co.uk, describe your organisation and what your challenge is you want to address and let’s start the conversation.
