Business Agility and Adaptability
Most SMEs are nimble, and lean but not flexible thereby finding it difficult to address change and uncertainty that requires agility and adaptability to achieve. Business agility has moved from a buzzword to our common reality characterizing the rapidly disruptive business environment.
Due to lean resources available for business operations, many SMEs already run nimble processes. Being lethargic and constantly resistant to change are some of the reasons why businesses fail irrespective of size and nature. Organizations that are unable to act quickly and respond to change decisively will eventually get swept away in the current world of business. Change and become exceedingly frightening and disruptive, however, it is an action that must be diligently appraised and addressed.
Building agility and adaptability entails a lot of resources, insights, and design thinking to achieve. Agility speaks to excellent and responsive operations while adaptability speaks to managing customers and market expectations through consistent value creation.
Organizations that can consistently create value are better positioned due to their agility and adaptability framework. How do you achieve agility and adaptability?
- Understand your strengths and leverage: You cannot be good at everything, and this is a truth that you must accept and deal with. However, you can be good or even great at deploying your strengths and leveraging those of others to achieve your purpose. When you understand your strengths and the leverage that you have, it makes it easier to know the route to take when you meet a roadblock.
- Understand the use of technology and design thinking: Technology is a catalyst that enhances productivity, performance, and outcomes. Numerous technologies have been infused to impact business operations in the 21st century than ever been imagined. Technology has helped organizations and businesses pivot, improve processes, or enhance performance. You must know how and when to deploy these tools and technologies to achieve desired results.
- Understand people and resources: Both people and resources are finite in all ramifications. While our needs can be infinite, the resources and people that can support our activities are finite. They have limited power and time, and you must learn how to maximize these for peak performance and optimum productivity. The importance of people and resources (two of the four factors of production) cannot be understated in any productive endeavour. Learning how to leverage them can increase your agility and adaptability skills and competencies.
In this current economic climate wrought with accelerated change, overwhelming complexity, tremendous competition and lightning communication, businesses and individuals that will survive are those that continue to stay agile and constantly adapt their processes to meet and surpass the ever-increasing customers’ needs.