Sherpa Alliance

As the saying goes, “when you need a friend, it’s too late to make one”. 

Make friends with organizational agility before it’s too late.  When you find yourself in a situation in which you need agility as your friend, or a new level of agility than you have needed before, it’s too late, because:

• Agility doesn’t just crop up in the moment (Where Does Agility Come From?)
• Agility doesn’t happen by accident (Agility by Design).  
• Agility is about Expecting and Managing the Unexpected.

Our agility gets tested every day, sometimes mildly and sometimes brutally.  These tests of our agility sort the winners from the losers, the haves from the have-nots and the victors from the victims:  

• Heading into an economic downturn, we have all seen plenty of businesses large and small, which failed the test, dismally, including some who were the juggernauts of business (think of some of the banks, automotive manufacturers and retailers).
• In the bottom of a downturn, when it becomes an endurance test of staying in the game long enough for the game to change, without prematurely latching onto glimmers of hope.
• As things start to turn up again, with those that are ready to pounce, seizing opportunities for their business to not only bounce back, but ratchet up to the next level of market share by filling the void left by the casualties.

How well are you passing the test?  Each of these phases above tests different aspects of our organizational agility.  The upturn, no matter how gradually and progressively it unfolds, will be the next phase of the test – are you making friends with a next level of agility to be ready to fully leverage and exploit the opportunity? 

Agility is complicated and, if we aren’t careful, we can adopt the wrong kind of simplicity in the face of that complexity (Simplicity & Complexity).  That wouldn’t be making friends with agility.  Taking our agility to the next level is a systemic problem requiring a systemic solution.  Agility demands a complex system and a discipline you can trust to deliver, when you need it, real-time, in the moment, moment by moment, as an unfolding journey.

We can learn something from the way fighter pilots are trained (The Fighter Pilot’s OODA Loop:  Observe: Orient; Decide; Act):

• We win the dog-fight by having a smaller OODA Loop than our adversary, so that our OODA Loop can operate inside their OODA Loop, outmaneuvering them.
• Think of our Organizational OODA Loop as: “connecting vibrant OODA loops that are operating concurrently at several levels.  Workers close to the action stick to tactical loops, and their supervisors travel in operational loops, while leaders navigate much broader strategic and political loops.  The loops inform each other.  If everything is clicking, feedback from the tactical loops will guide decisions at higher loops and vice versa”
• Besides our closest competition, our number one adversary these days is the speed of business, the pace of change and the turbulence, uncertainty and volatility of the business environment – the OODA Loop of the business environment has shrunk massively over recent times, with things changing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
• If we are still operating with a large, lethargic, open-loop OODA Loop as an organization, then we are very likely to be losing the dog-fight, as the business environment OODA Loop is operating inside our Organizational OODA Loop and we are not keeping up.
• So the question for you is – what have you done lately to massively shrink your Organizational OODA Loop to be operating inside the business environment OODA Loop?

Set a goal over The Next 100 Days to massively shrink your Organizational OODA Loop.  Be making friends with agility before it’s too late.  That’s what our work is about.