
Agility is a characteristic highly valued in athletes, doctors, and lawyers—so why shouldn’t it be similarly regarded in business? Katalyst has previously explored how agile methodology is reshaping the IT industry, but just about any organization can benefit from adopting this approach.
“Change and risk and uncertainty [are] just such a big part of almost every business today,” says Travis James Fell, a software product owner specializing in data management and analysis. “I think it’s agile’s embrace of change and early failure that enables it to see disruption as a positive trend, while traditional management techniques tend to see disruption as a problem that has to be managed.”
Plan for the Unplanned
Being agile doesn’t mean going into a project without a game plan. You still need to establish goals and standards and create a roadmap and timeline to achieve success. From there, though, the mentality changes. Where some companies will follow their plan through to the end and then declare it complete, an agile company will see the project through to a certain (usually predetermined) standard and then unleash it to see how well it functions and accommodates user feedback. Agile can be implemented for wide-scale company success and not just applied to specific projects. The senior management team at Arizona-based food distributor Shamrock Farms meets every quarter to evaluate and reassess progress, consistently and frequently adjusting strategies. Since adopting this outlook, the company has consistently ranked among the highest-earning food service companies in the U.S.
“I think one thing that’s helpful for companies to see the value of agile and make the change is to see how that approach of small innovations tested on small groups in a very rapid manner can help them grow their business,” says Fell. Agile not only lends itself to faster development but quicker results—had Coca-Cola adopted an agile approach in 1985, it would have avoided one of the greatest marketing disasters in American history. The brand nationally unveiled a new formula for its flagship product, discontinuing the original with little warning to consumers and launching a massive ad campaign to promote the change. The backlash was so immediate and ferocious that the company reversed course just two months later. Had they approached the launch in stages, they could have seen the error in their ways much sooner.
Be Ready for Day 1,001
In his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb used a particularly fowl example to explain the uncertainty of life and business. Every day, farmers feed their turkeys, and the birds become accustomed to this consistent, predictable act. The pattern continues until shortly before Thanksgiving when the now-30-pound turkeys experience something decidedly different.
Turkeys aren’t the only species susceptible to this phenomenon. “Thousands of years of human history have shown that powerful and permanent disruptions can be only a day away,” Fell points out. “Just because we’ve been solid and stable for 1,000 days, doesn’t mean that day 1,001 is going to be the same.” Your organization’s day 1,001 can arrive at any time, and while you might not be able to predict exactly what it will entail, you can prepare yourself to react to it appropriately.
“Businesses have to develop a certain business intelligence capability to detect these events and a certain business agility,” says Fell. “I think this mindset can help businesses see these big disruptions as opportunities to gain a competitive advantage in doing their business.”
Don’t be a turkey—reach out to the Agile experts at Katalyst to find out how you can get yourself ready for day 1,001 and beyond.