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 8. People

This chapter focuses on the people component of the enterprise and provides insights on optimizing this for enhancing agility. The onset of the Information Age has been the trigger for businesses to recognize the importance and the value of knowledge. In this era of disruption, arising from fast-paced change, enterprises are realizing that the foundation of their competitive advantage has shifted from mass production to knowledge-based outcomes. The enablers for knowledge-based outcomes are based on innate human attributes: creativity, innovation, learnability, passion, teamwork, and collaboration, to name just a few. In today's era, it is these attributes that are driving the creation of products and services, compared to labor and capital in the industrial era. It is therefore not surprising that enterprises are recognizing the importance of people as critical enablers of agility.

The chapter will explore the following topics:

  • The significance of people in agility

  • People...