Leading scaling agility is like transforming while performing because it involves driving significant organizational change and adapting to new ways of working while still delivering on current responsibilities.
Here is why leading scaling agility can be compared to transforming while performing:
- Simultaneous focus on transformation and performance: Leading scaling agility requires leaders to balance the need for transformational change with the ongoing need to deliver results and meet current business objectives. It's not a sequential process where transformation is completed before focusing on performance. Instead, leaders must navigate both aspects simultaneously, ensuring that the organization continues to perform effectively while undergoing transformation.
- Agility amid change: Scaling agility involves creating an organizational environment that is agile and adaptable to change. Similarly, leading during transformation requires leaders to be agile in their thinking and actions, quickly adapting to new circumstances, making informed decisions, and guiding the organization through the change process. Both situations require leaders to navigate uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity while keeping the organization on track.
- Balancing short-term and long-term goals: In leading scaling agility, leaders must balance short-term goals, such as meeting customer demands and achieving financial targets, with long-term goals related to organizational transformation and agility. Similarly, during a transformation, leaders need to ensure that the organization continues to perform in the short term while working towards long-term goals of change and improvement.
- Managing change resistance: Leading scaling agility and transformation often encounter resistance from individuals and teams who may be hesitant to embrace change. Leaders need to address this resistance, build buy-in, and foster a culture of openness and adaptability. This requires effectively managing stakeholders, communicating the vision and benefits of the transformation, and providing support to help individuals and teams navigate the change process.
- Continuous learning and improvement: Both leading scaling agility and transformation involve a mindset of continuous learning and improvement. Leaders need to foster a culture of experimentation, feedback, and reflection, where individuals and teams are encouraged to learn from successes and failures, adapt their approaches, and continuously improve their performance and agility. This focus on learning and growth enables the organization to transform and evolve while performing at a high level.
- Embracing innovation and disruption: Leading scaling agility and transformation often involve embracing innovation and disrupting existing ways of doing things. Leaders need to encourage a culture of innovation, empower employees to challenge the status quo, and foster an environment where experimentation and creativity are valued. This mindset of embracing innovation helps drive both transformation and performance by identifying new opportunities and approaches.
In summary, leading scaling agility is like transforming while performing because it requires leaders to navigate both the need for organizational transformation and the imperative to deliver on current responsibilities. It involves balancing short-term and long-term goals, managing change resistance, fostering agility, embracing continuous learning, and promoting innovation. By effectively leading during transformation and performance, leaders can guide their organizations to successfully adapt, grow, and thrive in a rapidly changing business landscape.
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