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

Chapter 3. The Enterprise as a Living System

This chapter is about the need to liberate the enterprise from the grip of the mechanistic model and the criticality of treating a business as a living system. The chapter also covers the key characteristics of living systems and their implications for a company.

For decades, enterprises have been modeled as closed-ended systems, the rationale for which is discussed in this chapter. Closed-ended systems, for example, machines, are largely insulated from the external environment and incapable of learning on their own. Hence, although they are highly predictable and stable, systems are not capable of sensing, responding, and adapting to changes in the environment. Open-ended systems, also known as living systems, on the other hand, interact with the environment through the exchange of information, learn from interactions with the environment and, therefore, are able to evolve by adapting and responding to change, for example, humans have evolved...