Agile or agile? Make the mindset shift to fast, flexible and intense customer focus

Today’s business leaders are facing an ever-evolving set of pressures — be it expectations on the customer side, the constant pressure of higher employee turnover, keeping pace with technology and competitors, and the promises and peril of viral social media content. To survive, or even better, thrive in this constant whirlwind, organizations need to rethink their traditional ways of operating and move towards newer delivery models.

But adopting new ways of working in the face of strong headwinds takes strength and stamina. Change is hard, and not so much because of technical or structural issues, but rather the general reluctance to change. How do you shift the mindset of the workforce to welcome any change? More specifically, how do you become a more agile organization? 

Assimilating Agile values and principles

In our work with clients we’ve seen firsthand organizations that are most effective at changing in order to win against competition and disruption live and breath a common set of characteristics that align well with Agile methodology values and principles:

1. Incremental value delivery: “Deliver often and deliver early” — don’t wait for a “big bang” release at the end, but build and deliver customer value incrementally
2. Cross-functional teams: All the skills needed to deliver the process are within the team
3. Customer collaboration: Conversations with the clients to understand their needs and asking for regular feedback
4. Risk reduction: More frequent collaboration, testing and releases compared to delivery in large ‘chunks’ where ‘issues’ are discovered late in the timeline
5. Self-organized, persistent teams: Teams organize themselves, identifying the right resources rather working with ‘whoever’ is available
6. Welcome to change: Course correction when necessary compared to relying on initial planning

Breakthrough to Enterprise Agility

Enterprise Agility is an organization’s ability to quickly compete and drive growth in new, ambiguous situations by learning and continuously adapting to the market

Agile – meaning the methodology – has been around for some 20 years now, and while many organizations have tried implementing Agile ways of working, only a third have reached the mature stage, what we refer to as Enterprise Agility. Often, when leaders speak of agility, they’re not talking about Enterprise Agility, but rather are using it as a synonym for “fast and nimble.” If a company wants to achieve Enterprise Agility, it needs more than lots of agile teams. Simply checking the boxes by doing stand-ups, demos or other “Agile ceremonies” doesn’t make you an agile team organization.. A truly agile enterprise has shifted its collective mindset to a better way of working: fast, flexible, and intensely customer-focused; and stitches Agile into the fabric of who they are as a company. When operationalized correctly, Enterprise Agility can dramatically improve an organization’s speed to market, productivity and quality; and can elevate its customer and employee experience.

Shifting the focus to outcomes, not the work

In our experience, the breakthrough benefits from Enterprise Agility appear when the entire organization has made the mindset shift to focus on business outcomes.These key cultural tenets guide the behaviors in a mature, agile organization:

Customer centricity: Learn to think ‘outside-in’

• Before designing products and services, get to know your customer. Scratch below the surface to uncover what’s really going on. Actively seek, listen and incorporate feedback to understand their needs. 
• Treat your customer as a strategic partner.
• Shift from a ‘check-the-box’ mentality to a team-centered mindset where job satisfaction comes from delighting the customer and a true passion for delivering the outcomes.

Craft a story of what you are doing, why it's important and the impact it will have for the customer

• People by nature love to listen to and tell stories. Engage and inspire your people by creating a common vision and success factors across the entire organization, aligning your teams beyond financial goals and constraints.
• Establish specific long and short term goals, and clearly communicate them through storytelling and clear measures of success.

Fail, but learn, fast by encouraging a growth mindset

• Fear of failure often forces us to avoid challenges, but failure itself presents some of our greatest learning opportunities. The willingness to allow teams to fail fast cultivates a culture of continuous learning and growth, drives higher quality and reduces waste.
• Increase successful product development and accelerate innovation through rapid prototyping and Proof of Concepts (PoCs), and make small shifts based on evidence.
• Challenge yourself to think about speed to market in a radically different way — from months to weeks to days and perhaps hours too.

Experiment and innovate

• In a highly competitive market, its bold ideas, pushing boundaries and exploring the incongruous and the ridiculous that brings new ideas to life. 
• Embed innovation in the delivery lifecycle to boost creativity and offer a unique experience that helps to attract and cultivate the best talent. A truly agile team has time for innovation built into the way that the team works, even holding innovation specific sprints.
• Remember that innovation and collaboration can come from anywhere. 

What’s next on your Agile journey?

Let’s face it — many companies have tried Agile and have struggled to realize its benefits. There are a number of ways that PwC can help shift your organization’s mindset and close the Agile achievement gap. In the next article in our Enterprise Agility series, we’ll explore PwC’s BXT, the next step in business transformation that brings all of the methodologies of the modern business world together in a streamlined approach to reframe how your organization works, thinks and engages.

#EnterpriseAgileTransformation #agiletransformation #EnterpriseAgile #BXT

Co-developed with Mike Pino and Priya Kamdar

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