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2019 | Buch

Achieving Business Agility

Strategies for Becoming Pivot Ready in a Digital World

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Über dieses Buch

Know how to lead and establish business agility in your organization. Benefit from clear, actionable steps based on change management truths that have been long underutilized and have limited the success of agile expansion into your business. This book provides a pragmatic framework for leading your business toward shifting to an agile mindset.

Achieving Business Agility offers strategies and concrete examples to engage business executives and will teach you how to effectively execute these strategies. Whether you are a delivery executive, a change advocate, a consultant, a business leader, or a newcomer to agile, you will learn clear actions from a practical, business-oriented perspective that is vital to effect change and bring agile into your business.

The book is structured in three sections. The first provides you with a deep understanding of each of four strategies. The second section tells the story of a company that applied these strategies through the eyes of several key players. The last section helps you get started applying what you learned in your own company.

What You’ll Learn

Get the attention of your executives by alerting them to a company problem that can impact them personally and create a sense of urgency to address it

Collaborate with your executives in a way that gets them to open up and to see how their operating model is a contributing cause to the company problem

Demonstrate how your executives can specifically benefit from a new agile business operating model and address the company problem

Create a reinforcement structure on a larger scale to establish agile as the new standard operating model in your organization

Who This Book Is For

Managers, business leaders, and consultants at/for large enterprises or small startups who want their company to better compete in today’s fast-moving markets that present threats and opportunities at every turn. No agile expertise is required.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

The Mechanics - Understanding Strategies to Achieve Business Agility

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Sound the Alarm
Abstract
A sound-the-alarm strategy will get an executive’s attention by alerting them to an imminent company problem and creates a sense of urgency to address it. This strategy is based on getting your executive’s attention by pointing out the ramifications of an emerging and imminent business problem: new competitors are winning over your customers and poised to take the lead. Today, companies are competing on a whole new playing field. Customer demands are changing too fast for most companies to keep up. As the world becomes more digital, traditional companies are being disrupted and are rapidly losing market share to more agile competitors. Modern companies need to rethink how they will adjust in order to survive. In today’s competitive landscape, speed matters. If companies cannot respond quickly—with more agility—they will be left behind.
John Orvos
Chapter 2. Look in the Mirror
Abstract
When the executive realizes there is a company problem, but does not know they are part of the problem, it’s time for them to look in the mirror. This is a critical conversation to bring them to that realization while respecting their views.
John Orvos
Chapter 3. Shine the Light
Abstract
You can shine the light on a new way to make product decisions that will best deliver customer value. Your task at this stage is to demonstrate how the executives from the four customer-facing pillars, delivery, finance, marketing, and channels, can benefit from a new operating model to address the company problem. You will, therefore, need to take action as the first step toward this change by illuminating how each executive will benefit by improving their operating model to be solve the company problem.
John Orvos
Chapter 4. Agile Business Realization
Abstract
So far, we’ve sounded the alarm, looked in the mirror, and shined the lights.
John Orvos

The Story - Strategies in Action

Frontmatter
Chapter 5. The Solar Corona Insurance Company
Abstract
Throughout the chapters in Part 2, we will be looking at the fictional breakthrough stories of several delivery and business leaders who knew very little about agile: we’ll combine them into one composite persona for this book, a leader we’ll call Linda. Linda is just like you and me—a conscientious and respected executive in her corporation (Solar Corona Insurance Company), trying to succeed with the new assignments given to her. As you will see as the story unfolds, she made strides to achieve business agility, but for every two steps forward, she took one step back.
John Orvos
Chapter 6. Sounding the Alarm at Solar Corona
Abstract
It’s 10:00 AM Monday morning as the managers shuffle in to the conference room for the yearly budget review meeting. Oscar Dayton, CFO, is nervously pacing at the back of the room. Oscar had arrived earlier than the rest of the executives, trying to give himself just a few more minutes to prepare for what he knew would be a contentious meeting.
John Orvos
Chapter 7. Solar Corona Looks in the Mirror
Abstract
ED: Open dashes allowed inside dialogue as in ch. 7.
John Orvos
Chapter 8. Shining the Light on Solar Corona
Abstract
Linda was happy that the meeting had gone so well. Now came the tough task of trying to identify a pilot where they could demonstrate all the transformational change that had been presented to Davis in a way that would actually provide value to customers. Linda asked Chuck, Howard, Josanna, and Steve to bring together all the information about the current portfolio of work that they had in IT, so they could begin to sort through any of the opportunities that might be suitable for a pilot.
John Orvos
Chapter 9. Agile Business Realization at Solar Corona
Abstract
Six months had now passed since the pilot began. The MVP had been delivered two months prior, an astonishing achievement given SCI’s previous track record. Davis requested a special review—broadcast across the company, as well as hosted in-person in the main office for whomever could attend there—to discuss the pilot: the results to date and the future of the new operating model as well as the pilot itself. Linda went to the team and asked how they wanted to present to Davis.
John Orvos
Chapter 10. Learning from Solar Corona
Abstract
After relaying Linda’s story to a couple of agile transformation consultants, I asked, “So how’d she do it?”
John Orvos

The Takeaway - Defining Your Company’s Journey

Frontmatter
Chapter 11. Importance of Alignment
Abstract
To summarize, the four actionable strategies to achieve business agility are as follows:
John Orvos
Chapter 12. Your Journey Ahead
Abstract
By enabling the other four pillars to pivot together, they will become agile, which will help your large organization defend against emerging disruptive competitors in a digital world plus gain you personal visibility that may propel you to the next level in your career. Leading change for enabling the other four pillars to pivot gives you a terrific feeling and a sense of pride in a job well done.
John Orvos
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Achieving Business Agility
verfasst von
John Orvos
Copyright-Jahr
2019
Verlag
Apress
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4842-3855-4
Print ISBN
978-1-4842-3854-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3855-4

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