Agility Management

 “Before accepting the position of CEO of this company, I conducted a thorough investigation into how the management functioned as a whole. The results of my research show that the enterprise agility of this company has been hampered by bureaucracy due to a lack of business agility.    From now on, we must purge the bureaucratic mentality and replace it with a fresh perspective that allows people to change course and respond swiftly without being mired in bureaucratic complacency.  Business agility is what normalizes positive, continuous change. In order to make sure that leaders pay attention to their teams and empathetically address their needs, we need to hold regular feedback sessions, meetings, and communication channels”.

In our organization, the new Agility Management System (AMS) was implemented in this manner.   I oversee production for a biscuit firm that has marketing offices spread throughout India.   I hold a diploma in biscuit production and a master's degree in mechanical engineering.   Since I always ensure that the factory workers are satisfied and well-paid, production has never been halted for outside reasons.    The office is undoubtedly run similarly to how all offices ought to be run.    The market for our biscuits is enormous, and we rank second in biscuit production behind a global brand.

Following certain conflicts with the director board, a new CEO took over as leader.   He was a relatively young man who had attended numerous business institutions and received multiple management degrees. I summarised his statements at the beginning when he addressed the company's management board, which I also attended.

The new CEO was a highly engaged individual. At least once a week, he stressed, that he wanted to meet with the production and administrative staff at least once a week. Additionally, he issued a circular to the factory workers union office stating that he would like to meet with production heads and the senior workers also on the first of every month. The manufacturing workers were ecstatic because no CEO had ever taken the time to greet them or ask how they were doing. The only person they could come to with complaints was me, and I took care of their issues right away.

Every employee in the office was wearing a badge with a smiling emoji and the words  "I AM AGILE" on top of the emoji. Upon entering the office, the security guard welcomed me with a smile and said "Agile Morning" rather than "Good Morning."      Instead of saying "Good Morning," everyone I encountered on the walk to the conference room wished me "Agile Morning."   The CEO had  begun his game-changer step!  We, the production team, were also handed similar badges to wear before we entered the conference space.   The CEO thanked us for wearing the badge as the meeting began and asked that we do the same in the workplace.   (This could be the first indication that you are an Agile leader who speaks honestly and transparently in the workplace.) When the CEO began his "Business Agility" propaganda speech, he thought we needn't have changed out of our work clothes to suit his meeting. He continued:

“To create an agile environment, compatibility and camaraderie in any working environment, even the work dress should be similar or nearly similar to that of the hierarchically challenged employee.  In an agile organisation, employees must be encouraged to think like and empowered to innovate in their sphere of influence that will help teams become more agile and flexible”.

"What is business agility?" was the subject of the inaugural agility meeting. It was interesting to observe the CEO-led weekly agility meeting. I was unfamiliar with the business lingo employed by the CEO during the discussion. Before I met our HR manager a few days later, I had no idea what business agility jargon like "OKR" (Objectives and Key Results), "TCS" (Transparent Company Strategy), and customer-centricity, "failing fast," "Pivot" machine learning, disruptive technologies, "vertical distance," top-down, bottom-up, internal triggers, external triggers, and countless others meant. The CEO offered advice on how to apply agility management in our company by encouraging teams to modify their processes and inviting feedback from competitors, co-workers, and other stakeholders by moving away from the conventional management system.

Our chief engineer objected to admitting competitors into our manufacturing operations to foster an agile environment and provide chances for everyone a peek at our production process.   He told the CEO that our superior biscuit quality is the reason why we are still positioned second in the nation. We would jeopardize our stability and risk losing all of our production secrets if we allowed our rivals to tour our factories.   After giving it some thought, the CEO hesitantly stated:

 "You could be correct.   Regarding your usage of the word "stability," I disagree.  Stability is no longer the key to sustainable success.  Our company has to shed its bureaucratic shell and evolve new behaviors and characteristics to match the Post-Covid world much like an organism would to survive and prosper.   It was evident that he did not like the objection raised by the chief engineer to show  ‘Business agility’ towards our competitors.´

The CEO’s agility business meeting was discussed (some even criticized him!) by the office and factory workforce.   One HR employee even thought that our rivals were sending spies to steal our production secrets for biscuits and that the new CEO was one of them.  The "paradigm shift" (I picked up this term from our CEO!) in the language used in office and industrial communications shocked me.   The agile team was enthusiastic about incorporating customer-centricity, disruptive technology, and "vertical distance" into their speech and communications, as well as short forms like "OKR" and "TCS."

The subject for the second week was how to change a company from a typical, hierarchical one to an agile one.    In keeping with the CEO's remarks, the office staff wore T-shirts and jeans or tracker pants.   The individuals working in the production unit, such as myself, and the chosen machine operators, came with stains from oil and grease on their work clothes.   The Chief Executive Officer expressed gratitude for our attire and remained silent regarding the office personnel's attire. "How to incorporate business agility in a workplace" was the theme for the third week. The CEO inquired if we had any thoughts on the matter. I got up and emphasized that everyone in our factory understands their roles, goals, and duties, and work as in a family to achieve our goals.

The HR manager went one step further and stated that all of the top-performing businesses followed the strategy of keeping both office and factory staff content in order to achieve goals. Those that neglected to provide for the welfare of their employees paid a high price and were excluded from the market. This is a universal fact, and by positioning the word "business agility" as a post-covid corporate innovation, younger company executives are attempting to "reinvent the wheel." He didn't stop there; he went on to say that the new generation of corporate executives utilized a lot of phrasal verbs and introduced plenty of jargon when explaining it. Additionally, since a large number of them were IT professionals, they employed hard jargon from the IT industry, such as artificial intelligence, agile software, and machine learning”.

The CEO flushed a little, but he quickly got over it and asked the HR manager:

“Alright. Could you please reveal your educational background? Would you please?”

“"Master's in Management of Business from IIT Chennai. 1990 was the year”. The  HR manager said.

“The news that you are an IIT fellow pleases me. The business management concepts that you acquired twenty-four years ago are either out of date or inflexible in the current context. You are still at a time when the management systems held the view that there was a "pyramidal system," with the top executives at the top and the rest of the workforce at the base. However, when "agility management" is used, the pyramid is flipped such that frontline executives are at the base and the working class at large is at the top” The CEO tried his best to make his argument stronger.

                 

                                

                                 Conventional Management                    Agility Management

The CEO went on to say, "Frontline executives should strive to learn from frontline employees when it comes to learning." It creates a culture of communication where the main objective is to discuss with the frontline staff to find an effective solution to a challenging problem. Organizations that adopt an agile mind-set unify their workers with the same goal and vision. The company's plan should be known to and ideally understood by every employee. They must understand the company's priorities and recognize their part in realizing the enterprise's objectives.   Agility coaches need to remember that at times such steps might end up in failure.     However, there are rewards even in these "failures." Agile coaches need to make sure that when an employee initiative doesn't work out, the employees use the lessons learned from it and make all of their subsequent attempts successful”.

At this point, the Workers Party's socialist trade union leader winked at me and held up his hand to address the CEO. 

 Fantastic.   In this particular meeting, a frontline staff member has voiced his desire to speak out!  I see it as an indication that our business is emerging from the shackles of antiquated and traditional organizational management.   Our business is already  TOTALLY ‘AGILED’." Exclaimed the CEO.

"You have to forgive me for saying this in a meeting like this," the trade union leader uttered. For years, the senior management has maintained that we are the foundation and pillars of the organization. You now say that you are all at the base of a triangle, and we are at the top. Since I can't see the triangle we are sitting on, I'm unsure what triangle you mean when you say this! What we get for our work a month is not even one-tenth of what the senior engineers and officers get . Then you said something like ÁgilityManagement'.  We have enough of  "Agility" here and what we now need is a wage revision".

The CEO looked surprised when he realized that bringing the representative of the union to his "Agility Workshop" had been a mistake. (Incidentally, I saw that the "frontline force" wasn't offered an invitation to join the "Agility Workshop" thereafter!) At that point, a 'Brief Agility Break' flashed on the screen. We will get together in thirty minutes. Looking at the union representative, the CEO smiled and said:

“Yes. However, following a "brainstorming" session with the director board, I shall report you.
Rumours spread amongst the "bottom line" employees, who the CEO referred to as "Apex employees," saying that the CEO's secretary had announced the break to spare him from this embarrassing situation”!

The CEO methodically planned these "Agility Workshops" for a whole year, and he didn't miss a chance to declare that the next year's net profit was going to triple that of the year previous. We soon received word of the balance statements and got an express invitation for an “Agility effectiveness analysis meeting." With a big smile, the CEO greeted us and said:
 "Today I wish to announce our milestone of achievement after the introduction of "Agility Management."

The CEO continued to describe the advancements as though they had all been made possible by his introduction of "Agility Management" after the balance sheet had shown up on the screen page. Eventually, the profit and loss statement appeared. He had surrounded the Net profit column in a circle. With his finger still firmly on the net profit, he declared triumphantly that it had increased by 25% above the previous year.
"We have an annual growth rate of about twenty to twenty percent", the chief accounting manager who was sitting next to me whispered. But he was reluctant to disclose anything ahead.

After a few weeks, the corporation convened its annual director board meeting.
A new CEO took control of the organization soon after the meeting, and I received an invitation to attend a workshop on the "Target Oriented Skill Development Programme"!