Change is hard. Less than 10% of companies that were part of the S&P 500 in 1983 were still present in 2013 (excluding the financial sector), according to McKinsey.
Lack of adaptive effort isn’t the problem. Of 1,900 executives McKinsey surveyed, 82% reported going through a “strategic redesign” in the previous three years. Yet only 23% of those efforts succeeded. What’s needed is a new leadership approach: Agile leadership can bridge the gap.
Agile leadership is a new paradigm for navigating change. It relies on teamwork and fast cycles of innovation and learning. Agile leaders must provide a foundation of stability, purpose, and trust to ensure their organizations thrive through periods of change.
This article will examine the characteristics of agile leadership and its role in creating future ready organizations.
Agile leadership is as different from traditional management models as the knowledge economy is from its industrial past. Adjusting to this “new normal” requires leaders to make three fundamental shifts, according to the MIT Sloan Management Review.
Managing yourself. Agile leadership begins with the individual. Agile leaders must model change by committing to personal growth, welcoming feedback, and building trust. Trust begins with transparency and open communication. “If purpose is the glue that holds people together, trust is the grease that allows them to work together,” the author writes.
Managing your team. Agile leaders need to convey a sense of purpose to their teams – the “why” that guides what and how things are done. The agile leader must then create the conditions for change without directing the outcome. Empower team members to make decisions and act. Measure impact rather than effort. Agile leadership knows how to prepare teams to learn quickly and pivot as needed.
Managing your networks. Networks include internal and external stakeholders that leaders may be able to influence but not control or supervise, unlike teams. Agile leadership requires building relationships by eliminating “silos”, i.e., walls between cross-functional sectors, to create real time communication and collaborative outcomes.
“To create an agile enterprise, the top officers – most, if not all, of the C-suite – must embrace agile principles, too,” writes the Harvard Business Review. An agile leadership team has three primary responsibilities:
Create rapid innovation cycles and feedback systems. Agile leadership typically uses innovation “sprints” of two to four weeks. To make the most of that time, with short, “stand up” meetings, participants create feedback loops and identify obstacles quickly. These meetings are like working sessions rather than routine ones, to address problems by describing options, outlining trade-offs, and recommending preferred solutions. Active engagement by all participants is critical.
Balance stability and innovation. Agile systems are designed for innovation through rapid cycles of experimentation, which can cause chaos unless balanced with stability. To determine how much disruptive change can be stomached at a given time, begin with metrics such as workplace surveys and other statistics to measure “innovation cycle times, flow efficiency (work time versus wait time), and market share changes,” according to the authors.
Prioritizing and delegating. Agile leadership does not come overnight, it takes practice, usually over several years. Since the practical daily demands of running an organization makes it unrealistic for the C-suite to devote all of its time to agile initiatives, top leadership must prioritize and delegate the “urgent”, the “important”, both short and long term tasks. Leaders who are able to prioritize and delegate report major improvements – quadrupling the time they devote to strategy and halving the time spent on managing operations – after completing the transition to agile processes.
At the organizational level, McKinsey suggests reframing the conceptual model from an industrial age “machine” to a “living organism” able to adapt to its environment. Here are three ways to create an agile organization:
Encourage self-governing teams. “Agile organizations maintain a stable top-level structure, but replace much of the remaining traditional hierarchy with a flexible, scalable network of teams,” the authors write. The teams should have relatively flat structures and may be linked into “performance groups” or functions with a shared goal. Empower the teams by providing clear, accountable roles and encouraging self-governance.
Create a dynamic people model. With an inspiring vision, agile leadership helps their people become successful by aligning organizational mission to team goals and providing opportunities to grow, and freedom to act. Allow employees to identify and pursue new skills, challenges, and projects that inspire their passions. This “role mobility” can extend vertically within teams and horizontally across teams.
Use technology to improve customer experience. Rather than using technology to cut costs and create efficiency, agile organizations use technology to create new value, improve customer experience, and drive growth.
Agile leadership is a paradigm for managing change through short innovation cycles and empowered teams. Agile leadership is a paradigm shift that enables organizations to thrive through change. In the words of McKinsey, “Some organizations are born agile, some achieve agility, and some have agility thrust upon them.” To make the most of the moment, make a plan to develop agile leadership now.
If you need to leverage the highly experienced consultants and seasoned management advisors at Wull to help implement agile leadership, please contact us for further discussion. Thank you.
Copyright ©️ 2025 by Stephen Wullschleger. All rights reserved.
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