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

Significance


Structure influences agility in the following ways. It determines:

  • The speed of decision-making and thereby the responsiveness to customer needs and changes in the environment

  • How efficient and effective the feedback loops are, that is, the speed at which the enterprise is able to sense the changes in the environment, and how quickly this information reaches the relevant stakeholders

  • The level of collaboration between people within and across teams

  • The alignment of teams toward delivering valuable outcomes

  • How effectively the strategy of the enterprise is executed

  • How optimally synergies across the business are identified and leveraged

  • The extent to which an enterprise can scale and descale quickly

  • The distribution of power and authority across a firm

It should be noted that among all the tangible elements of an enterprise, its structure is perhaps the most difficult to change. However, on the flip side, the right structure can be the biggest enabler for enhancing enterprise agility...