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

Inhibitors to agility


The following factors related to governance are key barriers for enterprises looking to enhance and sustain agility.

Optimization of silos

Companies that are organized around functions usually treat each function as a cost center or a profit center, thereby budgets are allocated per functional area. Organizing vertically, according to functions, carries a huge risk of strategic objectives being broken down into parts, which not only may not add up to the whole, but may end up being misaligned with the strategy. This can happen as each functional area chooses to narrowly interpret the strategic objectives, that is, from the perspective of specific functions. For example, if the strategic objective is to use technology for competitive advantage, the priorities of the technology vision might not align with the priorities of the marketing division. The technology team may consider allocating most of their budget toward replacing an outdated ERP system, but the marketing team...