Agility Goes to Cornell University!

March 2012

WHO WE ARE WHAT IS AGILITY? OUR SERVICES STRATEGIC AGILITY INSTITUTE AGILITY STORE

On March 8th, I was invited by Dr. Lee Dyer at Cornell University to deliver a brief presentation and respond to a number of questions regarding Agility. Lee and I have been sharing thoughts and ideas about Agility since 2005. Dr. Lee Dyer is professor of Human Resource Management and Chair of the Department of Human Resource Studies at the ILR School, Cornell University. He holds BBA, MBA, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching interests focus on organizational agility and complexity and human resource strategy. He has consulted and lectured on these and related topics world-wide. He has published several dozen journal articles and book chapters and over a dozen books and monographs.

Lee provided me with a number of questions to consider for the presentation and Q&A session. I've chosen one of the questions and an associated response to share with you.

Question: One perspective is that agile organizations need to leverage their front line people because they are the ones who have first-hand knowledge of possible opportunities and threats in the environment. These people aren't necessarily leaders, but it seems that they can play a strategic role in helping organizations adapt faster. Can the Agile Model be applied to these individuals?

CLICK HERE to see how we responded to the question.

DECISION-MAKING: The Organizational Speedometer

SPEED of action in organizations is often limited by speed of decision making. In many organizations, the slowest cycle time is management's ability to size things up and finally make decisions. A 2009 study by The Economist Intelligence Unit identified slow decision-making and existence of silos as two of the key constraints that keep organizations from being able to stay competitive in today's fast paced race for success. This is in part due to the rapidly increasing level of complexity which burdens and slows the decision-making process but also because of the more limited time available to make these decisions. We are operating in a world with only one time zone ... NOW! There is a growing intolerance for waiting for anything ... especially decisions. Yet, there are RISKS in most decisions with sometimes unclear consequences ... personally and corporately. READ MORE

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