Why real business agility is about brain not brawn

Just like stepping past that last defender, business agility isn’t just a matter of how quickly you can change direction, but the fine-tuned judgement needed to make the right move at the right time. How capable are your teams of making these judgements?

We can all remember running between cones at school, but was it all worth it? The cone sprints made you fitter and healthier, but they didn’t necessarily make you a better athlete.

In sports science, the agreed definition of agility is ‘‘a rapid whole body movement with change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus”. Interestingly, research shows the physical ability of moving your body from cone to cone is less important to agility than the cognitive ability of responding to stimulus. That’s why successful sports teams augment physical conditioning with ‘mini-games’ – exercises designed to mimic game situations and push athletes’ minds to the limits.

Steering through disruption

Businesses are looking to agility to boost their adaptability to uncertainty and change, from digital disruption to fast shifting customer expectations. Yet, like in sport, there’s a risk of overemphasising conditioning and underemphasising response to stimulus. Conditioning an organisation is investment in restructuring teams, new technology, and teaching agile methodology. What’s often missing is giving teams the cognitive ability to determine the ‘right change’. What does the landscape look like? What are the key threats and opportunities for our particular business? What are the available options and how can we make sure we’re in the best position to respond?

Learning from sport

So, what can businesses learn from sport about how to determine the right change? Comparisons aren’t always perfect as businesses spend most of their time performing where sports teams devote most of their time to training. However, sport science gives us the cognitive components of agility that could also be applied to understand business decision making:

• Processing – taking in the most important parts of a situation accurately
• Perception – understanding what is going on in a situation
• Reaction time – minimum time between perceiving stimulus and responding
• Anticipation – understanding how a situation will develop
• Timing – understanding the optimal time to respond

The impact of automation offers a good example of how this framework could be applied in practice. Here in the Channel Islands, our research shows that 30% of jobs are at risk from automation. Agility is needed to react to this by retraining people whose roles are likely to be affected, to make the most of the time freed up, and lay the foundations for wider digital transformation.

As part of training to be agile, teams can learn about what tools and technologies are available now or coming up on the horizon – there are now lots of amazing resources available online and locally to inform this evaluation. By understanding the situation, they can identify which tools can and will best match with their current business goals and anticipate how these will have to change as the industry evolves.

There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this. What you’re trying to instil is the equivalent of the reading of the game that gives a great player their decisive edge. Moreover, you shouldn’t be afraid of getting things wrong occasionally. Psychological safety and reducing fear of failure are essential parts of agility. People should feel empowered to fail and learn through the backing of those around them. This gives them the courage and space to choose a change and actually reduces the risk of mistakes. Further, this confidence, combined with situational understanding, allows them to get the timing right. As there are no prizes to be first or pressure to follow the crowd.

Sharing our experience

Here at PwC, we’re experiencing digital transformation in all its pain and glory. From systems evaluation to digital upskilling, we have a lot of experiences to share that could help to make your next change of direction better. Please feel free to get in touch.