Since the term agility was coined in the early 2000s, organizations started finding it as a strong point to market themselves to their clients. What was a differentiator in the early days has now become a base level requirement. Organizations are faced with the dilemma of how to continuously deliver better products or outcomes in a faster way to clients, at lower costs. And to top all of it, in an ever-changing external environment and the uncertainties it brings. However the method being just one aspect, organizations soon realized what was more crucial was the right mindset and the right behaviours – for sustained agility.

In project management, ‘agile’ was a fallout of how earlier models of client delivery, especially in the Software industry were linear and time-consuming. In the quest to make things better for clients, professionals researched on how client delivery could be improved through better methods. Clients were seeking something which was iterative, incremental, and evolutionary, with shorter feedback loops. And so ‘agile’ was born.

But the leaders had to lead the change. Agile required a different degree of adaptability and tenacity. Leaders had to be the ‘change ambassadors’. And this continues till today; even though we have organizations who have adopted agile, it has not been an easy change process. When any organization scales to larger sizes, with bigger clients and more employees, processes become more concrete, and agility becomes tough.

The agile mindset of the leader is the only thing which sees it through. The best leaders know the critical aspects of building a strong culture, infused with elements of how the organization wants to grow, and what changes it wants to bring within itself.

So how do leaders do it?

1. Agile teams:This team knows each other well. They recognize each other’s strengths and how they can fill in for the other’s gaps. Such a team consists of business leaders and not functional experts, who come together to solve business problems and to serve clients. This team has multiple collaboration mechanisms – the whole team and maybe also in certain parts. They operate across levels and are highly mission oriented. They believe in faster communication methods, and a lot of times would agree to disagree in the interest of the larger organization. They are also keenly sensing the external environment and are very quick to adapt. When they adapt, they evaluate the risks, and take a call. The call can be right or wrong, but when taken, the entire team works in unison towards it. Experienced leaders discuss and design such organizations to incorporate flat team structures, clear accountable roles, hands-on governance, and physical / virtual environments which foster transparency & collaboration.
2. Agile learning:Only a continuously learning organization stays ahead of the times. Agile leaders think far ahead and first put in place an agile learning system – which is accessible, flexible, and adaptable to the needs of the employees, and also speaks to newer methods of learning required today. Leaders promote self-learning, AI-based learning, customized learning paths for employees, etc.
3. High Performance orientation: The agile leader keeps experimenting with newer methods to ensure a robust, yet sleek performance management process. They incorporate work methods like sprints and feedback methods like check-ins. An ‘Objectives and Key Results’ – or OKR process now forms the baseline for most companies in determining goals and hence performance standards, as compared to traditional MBO methods.  What the OKR method does is that it keeps the organization in shorter cycles of ‘Think -> Decide -> Implement -> Evaluate -> Rethink’ mode – in the sense keeps performance management & evaluation highly dynamic. The check-in method ensures that there is a continuous two-way dialogue between the manager & the employee and eliminates any gaps in communication or surprises in performance evaluation.
4. Decision making – In essence, the above two interventions positively impact decision making. Organizations evolve themselves into decision-making machines, where every decision is fast but ‘need not be correct’. They work on the 70-30 decision approach: 30% of decisions may go wrong, but the speed in which 70% of decisions are taken provide enough time to intervene and course-correct the other 30%. This gives a lot of importance to the real world today – a constantly changing and evolving environment, where one needs to accept that uncertainty is part of life but still try to ensure that we are innovating and being fast and productive in our decisions.
5. Role modeling behaviours –Here’s what the leader is for – besides processes, methods, and approaches to build an organization, the leader role models what is right.

1. The leader shows the right way to embrace failure and stands up by the person who fails – to show that we are not perfect beings, and without flaws we cannot succeed.
2. The leader is vulnerable and talks about their own failures.
3. The leader encourages the individual to ‘ask for help’ – a trait without which an agile organization will not succeed.
4. The leader pushes people out of their comfort zones – e.g. to move into a role which they may not be comfortable with, but they could try if they had the backing of the organization. This behaviour creates fungibility in the organization and makes it truly agile and ‘entrepreneurial’.
5. Finally the leader is fast in also celebrating successes of the team. The leader ensures that they reward excellence, and not necessarily perfection.

As an organization, structure your levers appropriately to achieve agility. But then ensure that you have the right leaders who help in building the agile culture, since in the end, it’s all about the mindset.