As an entrepreneur or a business owner, you already know that having an efficient business model is crucial. It's not really important if it is a formal one or not, but having one is extremely important.
However, it's not just a matter of thinking about making your business more efficient. It's a matter of acting or keep on acting, to be more accurate. After all, making your business more efficient involves changes. And while some changes can be made quickly, others may need a lot of time. However, the results are well worth the effort.
Strange enough, not all organizations are already making the necessary changes. According to the Achieving Greater Agility report from KPMG and the Project Management Institute, only 27% of business leaders considered that their organization was highly agile. Nevertheless, more than 90% of these same business leaders, agreed to say that agility is crucial to business success.
Agility - Where Should You Begin?
The truth is that agility should involve the entire organization. However, it needs to start in one place only and it doesn't need to be at the top. Sometimes, it is better to start is the upper management or even in the middle management.
Then, the agility should then expand to the rest of the organization. The executives should make their stand as well as employees should have some training in Agile, Lean, and Six Sigma.
Without the involvement of everyone within the organization, there is no way agility can be a success. So, there is the need to emphasize some important issues such as making better products for customers, cutting waste, and improve the speed to get the products on the market.
Agility - The Steps For Transformation
The reality is that every organization is different. So, the process of introducing agility into your organization will probably be different from a fellow entrepreneur that you know. Nevertheless, there are some approaches that have been getting a lot of success. So, we believe that it is worth to mention them:
- A formal transformation plan should be created. In most successful cases, this has been done by the Project Management Office who reports directly to the chief executive officer.
- Make an investment in coaching and training people. This will help them transition to their new roles easily and more efficiently.
- The change should be made across the entire organization at the same time. However, it is important to notice that you should divide the changes into smaller pieces. This will be easier for everyone to get used to these changes.
- You should try to implement the changes in waves and don't try to do it all at once. This way, you will be able to coordinate the support, technology, and management that you specifically need for each wave.
- Agility is a continuous change. Therefore, it is important to keep monitoring changes as well as to make adjustments when they are required.