Building resilience through organisational agility

GC leadership: Boardroom insights part 3

Without practising agility, boards may find it difficult to initiate rapid responses to unexpected events, and struggle to pivot or innovate as their environment demands it. Embracing and embedding flexibility into everyday operations will ultimately strengthen an organisation’s ability to remain competitive in unpredictable markets.

Legal counsel can enable this agility by evaluating risks, gauging appetite, and helping to chart the appropriate course ahead so that boards can proceed with confidence. Achieving and maintaining organisational agility requires a team effort; drawing on broad experience and business knowledge and leaning on the skills and specialisms of advisors. General counsel have a key role in guiding and maintaining boards’ agility, supporting with strategic and operational advice that’s led by institutional and legal expertise.

But what does agility mean in this context? Beyond that – what are the main barriers to organisational agility, and what are the foundations that are needed to develop more fluid operations?

The foundations of organisational agility

For businesses, agility is about embracing and embedding change within everyday operations. By routinely practising adaptation to change, organisations can become better prepared to innovate and evolve as their environment demands it. Ultimately, this strengthens their ability to resist paralysis in the face of unpredictable markets and access competitive advantage.

A successful shift to more agile operations is underpinned by three key pillars:

1. A culture of experimentation

Complacency is the antithesis of agility. Industries, sectors, or markets that have previously enjoyed a history of stable growth may be less adapted to rapid change. Strategising without action can now be seen as a luxury from a past age – today, businesses are often rewarded for their ability to ‘fail fast’, trying something new, analysing their mistakes and pivoting into the next opportunity. Operational agility strives to embrace experimentation, developing an appetite to ‘test and learn’ and to be creative while assessing the risks. Sixty-four percent of executives recognise that boards need to foster a test-and-learn culture to successfully navigate the next economy.

“More and more legal departments are facilitating a culture of experimentation at their organisation by leading the way. Adopting a ‘learn fast’ approach means that trying new things always brings something valuable - even if you end up delivering a different set of objectives than you expected.”

James Touzel
Partner, Head of Future Law, TLT

2. Democratising leadership

Hierarchies can limit visibility and create bottlenecks, ultimately slowing development. Businesses striving for agility may want to reorganise teams into flatter structures and empower them to run their own projects. Delegating ownership of decisions to local managers or leaders can encourage creativity, collaboration and enable multiple areas of a business to strive for growth simultaneously.

3. Organisational intelligence

Quick decision-making and embracing failure are daunting when we don’t understand the potential risks. The rise of ‘greenhushing’ is a potent example of this: where organisations are so cautious about misreporting and litigation when it comes to sustainability, that they opt to not share anything at all. The key to unlocking this paralysis is information and understanding the risks and scenarios at hand. Building a team of trusted advisors with diverse perspectives can enable agility, and boards can support their decisions with the expertise and guidance of their legal resources.

Agility in practice

Opportunities for agility can present in different ways across sectors and industries. For leaders and advisors who want to push their organisations to become more flexible, first steps can include:

Welcoming late-stage adjustments to an original scope to maximise competitive advantage.
Reducing the scale of deliverables so that smaller batches of work can be developed more frequently, reducing risk while maintaining customer satisfaction.
Working in cross-functional teams to break information silos and bring key stakeholders together.
Putting motivated individuals at the front and centre of projects to improve drive and momentum.
Seeking the simplest route to a solution rather than spending time and resources on unnecessary exploration.

Ultimately, long-term sustainable growth will likely go hand-in-hand with preparing for the unknown and being agile in the wake of turbulent markets, technological advancements and unforeseeable threats. When these kinds of actions are underpinned by a central cultural shift towards experimentation and empowerment, organisations can be ready for change, and more resilient for what comes next.

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Date published

22 Mar 2024