Organizational Agility

I’ve been thinking about Organizational Agility a lot (as a competency and success factor) recently.  An executive asked me to pull together a workshop regarding this, which he called the “ability to work through the smoke and mirrors,” or the ability to get things done amid complexity.  Some of the “remedies” for this are increasing self-awareness (understanding your strengths and weaknesses in this area), and the ability to size-up the complexity of the organization, and keeping your composure when confronted with complexity/rejection.  

 

Organizational Agility is defined by Lominger according to this map:

 

“Organizations can be complex mazes with many turns, dead ends, quick routes, and choices.  In most organizations, the best path to get somewhere is almost never a straight line.  There is a formal organization – the one on the organization chart – where the path may look straight, and then there is the informal organization where all paths are zigzagged.  Since organizations are staffed with people, they become all the more complex.  There are gatekeepers, expediters, stoppers, resisters, guides, Good Samaritans, and influencers.  All of these types live in the organizational maze.  The key to being successful in maneuvering through complex organizations is to find your way through the maze to your goal in the least amount of time while making the least noise.  The best way to do that is to accept the complexity of organizations rather than fighting it and learn to be a maze-bright person.”    (quote from “FYI For Your Productivity, A Guide for Development and Coaching” by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger)(one of my go-to books).

 

What in effect Lombardo and Eichinger are saying is “business is very complicated.  Work through the complexity.”  When I was going to MBA School one of the texts we read started out with the line “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we see the truth, we transcend it… because once we accept it, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters”  (the book was “The Road Less Traveled” by Scott Peck)  which means in effect “life is tough.  Don’t expect that your life is going to be easy.”    Business is no different:  business is complex: if you accept that fact you can begin to find a way to work within it. 

 

A related competency would be “simplifying the complex” which maybe I will write about another day.