Book Image

Enterprise Agility

By : Sunil Mundra
Book Image

Enterprise Agility

By: Sunil Mundra

Overview of this book

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 agility: it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body—culture, mindset, and leadership—and the health of its various organs: people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Enterprise Agility
About Packt
Forewords
Endorsements
Contributors
Preface
Other Books You May Enjoy
Index

Characteristics of enterprises with high agility


Relatively well-established enterprises such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and ThoughtWorks, and the newer "disruptor" enterprises such as N26 Bank, Tesla, and Netflix are some of the well-known enterprises that have a high level of agility. These enterprises are seen as success stories with respect to not only anticipating and dealing with a rapidly-changing environment but also for leveraging it for their competitive advantage.

While agility is unique to each enterprise, businesses with high agility share some characteristics in terms of the outcomes they are able to achieve consistently. These include the ability to do the following:

  • Anticipate and recognize change in different circumstances, that is, to spot both opportunities and threats emanating from change early. Zara, the Spain-based world's largest clothing retailer, is known to spot fashion trends early.

    According to Donald Sull, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management:

    ...