- If yours was an adaptive organization, how would you know?
You're spending all this time and energy
trying to roll out processes that can help your organization
to be more nimble and adaptive.
And is with any journey, you need to know what it looks like
when you're coming close to reaching your destination.
So here's a set of signposts that should help you
to start recognizing any results
on the road to becoming more strategically agile.
First, you start to see major opportunities in your market
that you would otherwise have missed
if you weren't strategically agile.
You're able to rapidly take advantage
of major opportunities, which before you wouldn't have had
a prayer responding to.
You're starting to improve at attracting and retaining
the talented workers you need to make your strategy work.
And you're making them part of the strategizing process.
You can stop workers in the hallway to ask them
if they know the organization's strategy,
and they rattle off the top goals
before you even finish the question.
Those same workers not only know the organization's
strategic goals, they know exactly how their own work
directly supports those goals.
You have strong evidence that the organization
has cut loose initiatives that were failing,
and move those resources
towards innovating on new opportunities.
And, if a competitor attacks you
in one of your core markets,
you respond so quickly and so effectively,
they're boxed out of the market.
Now, if you've achieved one or two of these,
congratulations, that's a big win.
If you've been able to do several of these,
well, that's amazing.
You've had a significant impact
on your organization's agility.
And if someday you accomplish all of these, well,
I think you're in for that bonus you've had your eye on.
Each of these achievements though is relatively anecdotal.
One of the most important ways
you'll know that you're achieving
your strategic goals is through data.
If you've infused data planning and data gathering
throughout your strategic planning and execution processes,
you'll be able to point to those strategies that are working
and the ones that aren't.