How to Create an Agile Business That's Prepared for Change
There’s more to business success than finding customers and generating profits right now. Being able to adapt to new challenges is the often overlooked aspect of long-term profitability.
Current success is rarely an indicator of long-term sustainability. The pandemic is one of the best examples of this. Some of the most successful companies went out of business during the pandemic because they lacked the agile processes required to adapt to rapid change.
Agile development is a lightweight project management framework that promotes continual development throughout the life-cycle of a project. It requires close collaboration between all team members and constant communication. Unlike traditional project management—where an entire project and the desired outcomes are outlined from the earliest stages—agile development allows the parties to change as the project progresses.
In an ever-changing market environment, let’s talk about business agility and what you can do to prepare appropriately and stay competitive in the future.
Manage Your Efforts Well
A company must change to adapt to new market demands, but such change takes resources to complete. It takes intentional management skills and tactics to maintain both the day-to-day workflows and the incremental steps you need to improve over time.
Agile development requires that you plan to have both the tools and time to respond to changes in the market before they happen rather than after. It must be built-in to the company’s culture to be effective, as cultivating a mindset that accepts change is essential to staying competitive.
Remember that achieving business agility isn’t a linear process. As you progress in your project, you have to give yourself time to reflect on previous steps and experiment with new ideas. Iterative improvement is the theme here.
Collect All Types of Metrics
Business planning relies heavily on metrics, data, and trends. Collecting them is a large part of any agile strategy, whether they are positive or constructive.
Positive metrics grant you an optimistic look at where your business is going. These metrics are excellent for building morale but can also mislead if you fail to take others into account. Constructive metrics point you to where you need to focus and help mark early signs of risk. As a source of inspiration, the following article published by Verdant shares 18 significant operational key performance indicators to increase the performance and profitability of hotel properties.
Understand the Pareto Principle
The Pareto principle states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. Businesses today are large and complex, so what aspects of yours deserve your focus the most?
Agile development relies on finding the solutions that give you the best return on investment (ROI), which requires prioritization. Don’t focus too much on perfecting a small part of the company that gives you diminishing returns the more you work on it. You will want to ensure that the efforts generate more value than they cost. The following article by Foodable contains great examples!
Make Progress in Short Spurts
Do not expect an agile team to get perfect results. The focus should be on creating collaborative, working solutions to new problems—the ability to improve continually and take feedback into account matters more than the immediate results. Agile businesses test new products and solutions early for this reason.
Manage your projects with agility in mind. That is, avoid long marathons of work to finish a goal in favour of short sprints split up by reflection periods where you can determine what worked, what hasn’t, and what to do to improve the next sprint.
Create the Right Work Environment
Agile businesses have positive environments for employees and managers to conduct day-to-day workflows. Agility promotes collaboration and continual improvement, which reflect in rising profits over time, even in the face of a changing, competitive industry.
Right now, most businesses have deployed collaboration solutions that allow their teams to stay connected and productive from any location. These types of tools play a significant role in any company’s business continuity plan.
At its core, agile business development is an entire mindset based on preparing for and embracing change. If you can convince yourself of its benefits, you have the tools to empower your teams for the coming future.
Turn Business Agility Into Your Competitive Advantage
Stay ahead of the competition by embracing agile business processes. Being agile means committing to a more productive, resilient, and sustainable business.
Are you interested in seeing how other top companies are maintaining business agility? Get in touch with CHI Real Estate today.