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

Need to reinfuse "life" into enterprises


A fast-changing environment necessitates that businesses have agility, that is, they should be organic like living systems and not lifeless like machines.

According to Michelle Holiday, president of Cambium Consulting:

"This new story is emerging all around us, though few have connected the dots. Why does a flat, networked organization now seem the better choice, when we've relied on rigid hierarchy for so long? Why do we need to engage the passion of people within, when for so long we've considered them simply 'labor'? Why do we need to engage customers in meaningful conversation, when for so long it was enough to deliver a quality product? The answer is that each of these is a move in the direction of resilience, adaptability and creativity. In other words, it's a move in the direction of life." [vi]

A timeless fact about businesses is that they have always had people. Of course, while machines may be more significant in some companies than others...