In order to evolve, businesses need to have the ability to respond quickly to changes in market conditions or customer needs, regardless of the industry they’re in.
If you’re a business owner and encounter a disruption in your niche, you must be able to adapt the fastest you can, lest you allow competitors to overtake you. When it comes to dealing with changes like new technology and shifts in economic policy and trade agreements, companies must know how to respond as quickly as possible.
This attitude is called Strategic Agility.
Defining Strategic Agility
Strategic Agility is an organisation’s ability to foresee the shifts happening internally as well as the business environment in which they operate. In an effort to stay competitive, businesses need to recognise and quickly capitalise on opportunities that arise. You also need to be able to identify potential threats and mitigate them, or better yet, prevent them from materialising. Strategic ability entails recognising market changes that can be advantageous or harmful to the business and implement strategies on how to capitalise or avoid them.
To practice strategic agility, leaders and managers must design or build an organisational structure that facilitates an easier flow of information. Training people at all levels to think strategically also helps. Members of the company must be proactive and be able to keep an eye on the future while simultaneously achieving current goals.
What strategic agility looks like
Being strategically agile means you’re at the forefront of creating new services, products, and offerings to external stakeholders and internal customers and clients. It means having the ability to see and respond to changes quicker than your competitors. This approach allows for growth and improved profitability for the company. Agile leaders are adept at anticipating and managing volatility, uncertainty, and ambiguity. In addition, they’re also courageous and willing to take calculated risks to make way for bigger opportunities.
When market conditions change, a company might get blindsided and instinctively give up market share, resulting in margin shrinkage. You should not let this happen. It’s essential to keep a close eye on the latest financial market news and devise plans on how your organisation will adapt.
How to improve your strategic ability
Anticipate
Make it a point to consistently monitor the needs of your customers, both internal and external and identify what they might need in the future.
Sensing
Be observant of trends and anomalies in the industry, and keep tabs on patterns that may occur.
See how these patterns may affect your business and your customers. You should also know how to analyze the information that you receive so you can adequately plan and implement changes accordingly.
Responding
If possible, you should respond to your customer’s needs quicker than your rivals. You need to practice how to make decisions quickly and efficiently in order to do this.
A good tip would be anticipating possible scenarios and coming up with contingency plans for them. Doing so can help you be more prepared.
Adapting
Lastly, you should also be flexible and open to finetuning your processes as the market demands. It would help if you learned how to adjust your organisational structure to handle the needs of your customers and the market you serve.
If you need help in training your organisation on Strategic Agility in Melbourne and Sydney get in touch with us today to see how we can help.