Agility is a strategic asset, a philosophy that could really take leadership forward. It helps organizations to continue serving their purpose. In my latest blogpost I explained the three crucial drivers for agile: continuous change, far-reaching digitization and the war on talent Also, I asked you: are you the rabbit or the leopard? Let us dive into some examples that show why organizational agility is important.

Banks and insurers are born pioneers

Take for example the banking and insurance industry. An industry where organizational agility is really an asset that is being pursued today. ING is obviously at the forefront of this journey, like a kind of guide that challenges this industry. The rest is following quickly. Banks already call themselves  IT companies with a banking license. The core processes are 90% digitized, so responding quickly to digital and technological innovations is key to stay ahead of competition and keep up with customer demand.

No escape from digitization for construction

Now a completely different industry: construction. A fairly traditional industry. But here too, the changes in processes, products, services, digitization, contracting and partnerships are speeding up. Customers become more demanding and the competition is killing. Digitization is moving very fast with developments such as “build it digital before you build it physical”, digital BIM (Building Information Modeling) models up to 7D and AI and data driven asset management. An industry pre-eminently to choose organizational agility as a competitive advantage. Or not, but in 10 years they will be irrelevant. Even the big boys. A few are on their way, but the industry really has yet to wake up when it comes to grasping their dependency on agility.

Agile is not about IT

The journey of agility is not about scrum and devops. Those are just examples of agile delivery processes. It’s about the whole business becoming adaptive to change, speeding up delivery,thus staying relevant. About new structures and governance, about new product and service development and delivery models, about a new mindset. Above all, it is about embracing it as a leadership pillar to create a great place to work. For organizations that think agile is about scrumming in a few IT teams, will you keep on staring at the headlights of your competitors? Just asking, because in practice it turns out, organizations don’t know, recognize and acknowledge the necessity of agility.

Still think it is not your cup of tea? Or to stay in the metaphor, are you not the predator that opens the hunt, for the sake of customer demand and competition? We need to talk…