Enabling Business Agility: Navigating the Change

In a recent webinar, we had the pleasure of hosting business agility expert Karim Harbott, who shared insights on how companies can adapt and thrive in today’s rapidly evolving environment.

Business agility isn’t a new concept, but in the face of unprecedented change, it has become more crucial than ever. To understand its significance, we can look at both history and nature to understand why adaptability remains the cornerstone of survival and success.

Consider the woolly mammoth and the two-ton wombat — majestic creatures that once dominated their ecosystems. Over time, species tend to grow larger because size offers advantages like fending off predators, hunting more effectively, and storing energy reserves. However, despite these benefits, these giants are no longer with us. The reason lies in nature’s counterbalance — extinction events. Whether slow, like an ice age, or sudden, like an asteroid impact, these events dramatically alter the environment, favoring not the strongest, but the most adaptable. Smaller, more agile creatures that could find shelter, scavenge resources, and reproduce quickly were better equipped to endure drastic changes.

Karim emphasized how this principle translates directly to business. In the past, companies thrived by exploiting existing products and services with maximum efficiency. A classic example is the Ford Model T. By introducing the moving assembly line, Ford reduced assembly time from 12 hours to just 90 minutes, dramatically lowering costs and securing massive market dominance. But the landscape has shifted. The late 20th century saw the emergence of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity — known as VUCA. Technological advancements, globalization, and heightened competition accelerated the pace of change, with McKinsey estimating that today’s pace is ten times faster than during the Industrial Revolution, with 300 times the impact.

The Core of Business Agility

Business agility, at its essence, is the ability to respond quickly and effectively to change, maximizing value delivery to customers. Achieving this requires balancing two key activities:

• Exploiting existing products, services, and business models with efficiency.
• Exploring new opportunities through innovation, and developing new products, services, and business models.

The challenge is that what works for exploitation doesn’t necessarily work for exploration. Traditional organizational structures, cultures, and policies often impede innovation. To truly enable agility, companies need to reconsider these foundational elements.

Leadership and Management must evolve away from command-and-control approaches to more empowering, decentralized decision-making. Leaders should focus on creating environments where teams can thrive, fostering growth, and encouraging autonomy. As Karim aptly put it, “It’s easier to grow a unicorn than to transform a dinosaur,” underscoring the importance of nurturing new ideas and approaches rather than trying to retrofit outdated models.

Organizational Culture plays a crucial role. A strong, strategically aligned culture that can evolve provides a competitive edge. Companies must cultivate values and behaviors that support agility, emphasizing rapid adaptation and continuous innovation. Culture acts as a catalyst for change or a barrier — depending on how well it aligns with the organization’s strategic goals.

Structure and Teams need to shift away from rigid, hierarchical frameworks toward more flexible, cross-functional teams. This transformation fosters collaboration and accelerates decision-making, allowing teams to respond swiftly to changing market conditions and new information. It’s about breaking down silos and building networks of autonomous teams that work together seamlessly.

Governance and Funding models must also adapt. Traditional practices often involve annual budgets and rigid business cases that restrict flexibility. Agile governance, on the other hand, allows for quick pivots and dynamic resource allocation. Funding should encourage experimentation, acknowledging that not every initiative will succeed — but each will offer valuable learning. Karim highlighted the need for shifting away from waterfall-style governance to approaches that support “small, safe-to-fail experiments,” enabling organizations to test ideas quickly, learn from failures, and double down on successes.

A New Operating System for Business Agility

Ultimately, enabling business agility requires more than just adopting new tools or methodologies. It’s about creating the right “organizational operating system” — one that reshapes how a company thinks, acts, and responds to the world. Each product, service, and business model has a shelf life that is shorter than ever. Recognizing this reality and preparing for continuous evolution is no longer optional — it’s imperative.

Organizations that embrace these principles are better equipped to thrive amid modern-day extinction events like VUCA. By aligning leadership, culture, structure, and governance with the demands of today’s business environment, they can create an adaptable, resilient organization ready to lead the way in the new age of rapid change.

To watch the full webinar, visit this link.