In a world of constant disruption, organizational agility has become essential for long-term growth and sustainability. It involves seeking out new information, driving innovation and embracing change in a collaborative way.
Most leaders today recognize the need for agility, but there are many barriers to achieving it. Apart from having the technology to capture data-driven insights that can spark innovation, the insights themselves can get lost when insufficient trust hampers effective communication.
Change initiatives can also be derailed by bureaucracy that slows down processes, and internal politics that prolong decision-making. Silos that make it tough to figure out the root causes of problems and that discourage people from taking ownership of solutions can stifle innovation too. How can leaders break down these barriers?
Resilience, social intelligence and psychological safety
While many are focused on the technological side of agilty, three of the most important keys for becoming agile are actually resilience, social intelligence and psychological safety. Since agile organizations experiment to learn, occasional missteps are inevitable; empowering employees to act requires accepting a certain level of risk.
To bring their best to the learning process, individuals need to be able to “bounce back” from adverse experiences. Resilience requires a positive outlook and self-confidence, which together support a mindset that is open to information, is primed to succeed and enables people to listen, learn and achieve. Some people are naturally more resilient than others, but leaders can increase resilience in their organization by helping people develop confidence and positivity through training and coaching.
But most people hate to fail, and that’s where resilience comes in. The second key is social intelligence, a set of soft skills that helps build trusting relationships, open communication and, perhaps most importantly,
psychological safety. Psychological safety is what individuals feel when they are confident that there won’t be negative consequences for reasonable risk-taking, such as speaking up, offering a new idea or asking questions.
Research has shown that it’s crucial for enabling the effective teamwork and collaboration that allow humans to innovate, which is why it’s key for agility. Because it’s not just leaders that can create (or prevent) a psychologically safe environment, everyone within the organization needs the social intelligence that makes it possible.
Protecting the corporate legacy
As the pace of change accelerates, supporting agility has become a high-profile priority, but in reality these attributes have always enabled the innovation that has
helped put people and companies ahead. Organizational agility has become the new competitive advantage—the determining factor in whether a corporate legacy survives. And while no one knows what disruptions will come next nor which of today’s market leaders will falter because of them, one thing is certain: It will be agile organizations that are prepared to take advantage.
Mark Marone, PhD., is the Director of Research & Thought Leadership for Dale Carnegie & Associates, where he is responsible for ongoing research into current issues facing leaders, employees and organizations worldwide. He has written frequently on topics related to leadership, sales and customer experience and has co-authored two books on sales strategy. Mark can be reached at mark.marone@ dalecarnegie.com.
