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

Summary


In this era of fast-paced change, enterprises have a choice: to treat the disruptions arising from change as a threat or as an opportunity. If it is the latter, businesses must have the necessary agility to enable them to leverage change for delighting customers and creating competitive advantage.

Organizations are complex adaptive systems (CAS) and must be treated as living systems. Businesses that are modeled to optimize on predictability and certainty will struggle to deliver value to their stakeholders in an environment characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA).

The implication of being a CAS is that the company as a whole is greater than the sum of its foundational blocks and components. This necessitates that the approach to enhancing and sustaining agility is holistic. The capabilities underlying agility will be specific to each enterprise and must be identified and defined considering its own context and that of its ecosystem. The journey to...