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Enterprise Agility: Being Agile in a Changing World
Enterprise Agility is a practical framework for enhancing Agility and equipping your company with the tools to survive The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. Enterprise Agility shows how an enterprise can address this challenge head on and thrive in the dynamic environment. Avoiding the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises that focus on predictability and certainty, Enterprise Agility delivers practical advice for responding and adapting to the scale and accelerating pace of disruptive change in the business environment. Agility is a fundamental shift in thinking about how enterprises work to effectively deal with disruptive changes in the business environment. The core belief underlying agility is that enterprises are open and living systems. These living systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively. Agility is to enterprises what health is to humans. There are some foundational principles that can be broadly applied, but the definition of healthy is very specific to each individual. Enterprise Agility takes a similar approach with regard to it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body culture, mindset, and leadership and the health of its various people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility. Enterprise Agility is a tool for anyone with the motivation to influence outcomes in an enterprise, who aspires to improve Agility. Readers from the following backgrounds will chief executive officer, chief information officer, people/human resource director, information technology director, head of change program, head of transformation, and Agile coach/consultant.
490 pages, Paperback
First published June 29, 2018
37 people are currently reading
108 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 26, 2018
Extremely relevant and interesting for leaders facing an agile adoption/transformation as well as for lean-agile experts.
I've devoured this book.
I find it extremely relevant and interesting both for leaders facing an agile adoption or transformation in their organisation as well as for experts in lean-agile.
It is a clear, easy and enjoyable reading. And it is quite unique in successfully bringing together sound theoretical foundations with lessons learned from many years of hands-on experience in the industry.
I like how it describes Agility in a simple and clear way, and how it explains the relation between Agility and Agile Software Development.
It introduces a complex topic such as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) in a simple and interesting way. It explains how CAS relate to Agile Adoptions, Agile Transformations, scaling agile initiative. It also explains how to pursue organisational agility.
The book discusses common misunderstandings, pains, and common frustrations faced during Agile Adoptions and Agile Transformations. It uses CAS an a lens to explain the root cause of those frustrations and pains. And then it uses CAS to suggest tools and interventions to overcome those problems.
I definitely recommend this book.
I've devoured this book.
I find it extremely relevant and interesting both for leaders facing an agile adoption or transformation in their organisation as well as for experts in lean-agile.
It is a clear, easy and enjoyable reading. And it is quite unique in successfully bringing together sound theoretical foundations with lessons learned from many years of hands-on experience in the industry.
I like how it describes Agility in a simple and clear way, and how it explains the relation between Agility and Agile Software Development.
It introduces a complex topic such as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) in a simple and interesting way. It explains how CAS relate to Agile Adoptions, Agile Transformations, scaling agile initiative. It also explains how to pursue organisational agility.
The book discusses common misunderstandings, pains, and common frustrations faced during Agile Adoptions and Agile Transformations. It uses CAS an a lens to explain the root cause of those frustrations and pains. And then it uses CAS to suggest tools and interventions to overcome those problems.
I definitely recommend this book.
April 27, 2020
Sunil Mundra invited us to discuss how we can create organizational agility for the digital era. The author begins the book showing why the mechanistic way of managing is out-dated and why organizations demand to overcome the idea behind Taylor's management theory.
Following, the author presents the concept of complex adaptive systems comparing organizations with a living organism. As a dynamic flow system composed of agents and their relationships, and the external triggers, the "body" will be redesigned to keep alive.
In the last part of the book, the author described the elements that enable the achievement of business agility, which in summary are the combination of strategy, systems, people, capabilities, leadership, and culture.
Next, I shared the main takeaways:
- Companies need not prescriptive but adaptive approaches for change.
- Resilience is important.
- Past century organization designs and management theories are backed by relatively stable and consistent.
- Being Agile stems from the organization's mindset, culture, and leadership rather than anything.
- Agile transformation is a journey, not an end.
- Agility is the ability to both create and respond to change to profit in turbulent business environments.
- Enterprises need a culture that enables learning, fosters collaboration, builds meaningful engagement drivers, and empowers its people.
- Decision making needs to be decentralized, as the people who are closest to customers are in the best position to filter out the clutter and focus on the most relevant information.
- Organizations are complex adaptive systems; in other words, they are living bodies that operate systematically, so the sum of the parts does not reproduce the overall outcome.
- Agile is not a problem-solution framework but a problem identification framework. Agile helps to surface problems early through shorter feedback loops. Agile does not fix the dysfunctions in the system but helps to bring them out in the open soon.
- Agility in the enterprise level has six necessary underlying capabilities: responsiveness, versatility, flexibility, resilience, innovativeness, and adaptability.
- Companies must avoid the "cookie-cutter" approach while adopting anything from a practice or a framework.
- People-centricity is the essence of agility, and the mechanistic model hinders enterprises from becoming people-centric.
- Continuous adaptation should be the norm during the transformation journey.
- While you are facing an agile transformation, consider changing in structure, process, people, technology, governance, customer, leadership, and mindset, and culture. Remember that you are dealing with a systemic problem and be aware of one-size-fits-all solutions.
Following, the author presents the concept of complex adaptive systems comparing organizations with a living organism. As a dynamic flow system composed of agents and their relationships, and the external triggers, the "body" will be redesigned to keep alive.
In the last part of the book, the author described the elements that enable the achievement of business agility, which in summary are the combination of strategy, systems, people, capabilities, leadership, and culture.
Next, I shared the main takeaways:
- Companies need not prescriptive but adaptive approaches for change.
- Resilience is important.
- Past century organization designs and management theories are backed by relatively stable and consistent.
- Being Agile stems from the organization's mindset, culture, and leadership rather than anything.
- Agile transformation is a journey, not an end.
- Agility is the ability to both create and respond to change to profit in turbulent business environments.
- Enterprises need a culture that enables learning, fosters collaboration, builds meaningful engagement drivers, and empowers its people.
- Decision making needs to be decentralized, as the people who are closest to customers are in the best position to filter out the clutter and focus on the most relevant information.
- Organizations are complex adaptive systems; in other words, they are living bodies that operate systematically, so the sum of the parts does not reproduce the overall outcome.
- Agile is not a problem-solution framework but a problem identification framework. Agile helps to surface problems early through shorter feedback loops. Agile does not fix the dysfunctions in the system but helps to bring them out in the open soon.
- Agility in the enterprise level has six necessary underlying capabilities: responsiveness, versatility, flexibility, resilience, innovativeness, and adaptability.
- Companies must avoid the "cookie-cutter" approach while adopting anything from a practice or a framework.
- People-centricity is the essence of agility, and the mechanistic model hinders enterprises from becoming people-centric.
- Continuous adaptation should be the norm during the transformation journey.
- While you are facing an agile transformation, consider changing in structure, process, people, technology, governance, customer, leadership, and mindset, and culture. Remember that you are dealing with a systemic problem and be aware of one-size-fits-all solutions.
August 13, 2019
People have their own perception of what is 'Agile' and 'Agile transformation'. Sunil beautifully explains how Agile / Agility is not just about building a software, not just about forming Scrum teams or following a set of processes. Sunil's analogy of Organization as a Living system (CAS) aptly explains the need of understanding how various components of an organization impact Agility and the Agile transformation journey itself! As he rightly puts it - the transformation is a journey and not a destiny! There will always be a need and scope for improvement as the journey progresses!
The book talks about how each of the components of the CAS (complex adaptive system) need to work together in order to reach the highest level of Agility! These components are - Org structure, people, process, governance model, technology and consumer! Talks about some of the common blind spots (Working with Distributed teams and Vendor partners) and provides a framework to deal with increased complexity in adapting Agile in such environments.
Overall it's a great book with key insights and practical framework to increase Agility across the organization! Highly recommend!
The book talks about how each of the components of the CAS (complex adaptive system) need to work together in order to reach the highest level of Agility! These components are - Org structure, people, process, governance model, technology and consumer! Talks about some of the common blind spots (Working with Distributed teams and Vendor partners) and provides a framework to deal with increased complexity in adapting Agile in such environments.
Overall it's a great book with key insights and practical framework to increase Agility across the organization! Highly recommend!
January 27, 2020
One of the best Business Agility Books
This book has a powerfull massage into de Business agility change that the companies needs to get survive into a VUCA envitoment. It explains very well how the hierarchy affects the business agility capability customer's oriented.
This book has a powerfull massage into de Business agility change that the companies needs to get survive into a VUCA envitoment. It explains very well how the hierarchy affects the business agility capability customer's oriented.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews