Here is an interesting fact. If we go back 40 years to 1982 and take the Fortune 100 companies, so the top 100 companies by revenue in USA, how many of them do you think still exist today? 43. So it took less than 40 years for half of the top American companies to disappear (bankruptcy, merger or acquisitions). That’s half the life of the average American. Why do companies fail?

Business agility is becoming increasingly important for success in today's climate of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

In this lesson, you will identify the forces toward new ways of thinking and working. Learn how Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity play a critical role.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Core Concepts of Business Agility

• VUCA

Our agility is ever-evolving and continues to grow and change today. There will be no endpoint to our Business Agility journey. Having our agility vision extend without an endpoint opens the door for us to appreciate emergence and complexity. We are only beginning along our journey toward becoming VUCA masters.

Some of us are immersed in the “never-ending quest” of human development, based on the works of Clare Graves, Don Beck, and Ken Wilbur. These works help us see human development as non-linear and nested, built upon the foundations of our past and naturally growing up in a beautiful spiral that resembles the intricate structure found in DNA’s double-helix.

In addition, we understand that it is a leader’s job to identify and embrace multiple value systems, to guide human development that reverberates both through the individuals we coach and the more complex team interactions that may occur. Our collective job is to care for our Pacific Life eco-system from its very base, the rich soil that has enabled our 150-year evolution.

To be persistent, business agility needs an everlasting base of new values and principles.

Uncover the new values and principles for Business Agility and contrast them with old ways of working.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Values and Principles of Business Agility

• Building Organizational Intelligence

In March 2020, like every business, APMG International needed to address the impact of COVID-19.

Richard Pharro, the founder and CEO of APMG, and the leadership team were concerned about the risks ahead.

"We had to focus on balancing positive and factual information whilst not sugar-coating bad news, during our periodical staff briefings". - Richard Pharro

The new competitive advantage is self-organizing teams with the ideal mix of cognitively different individuals who are closest to the customer experience and empowered to make decisions. These teams are able to drive innovation and continuously improve their value creation to please stakeholders and customers.

In this lesson, you will encounter how teamwork, empowerment, and accountability are essential enablers for Business Agility.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Team Formation and Collaboration

Uber – the world’s largest ride sharing company is also a success story of incremental development Agile Methodology. When the app was launched in 2010 in San Francisco, USA, as UberCab, it just had core features. The cab booking used to happen via Email and there was not even an option to pay.

However, after a little while, Co-founder Travis found that it is difficult to manage requests by email. Then, he called a few drivers and discussed with them the Uber Business Model. Some drivers showed interest and got registered immediately. It was his first success and the rest is history.

They developed an MVP, launched it in the market, tested the idea, and got success fast. Starting with an MVP helped Uber finetune their business model as well as app features. They tested the product idea within a small set of early adopters and planned a smooth launch thereafter. Today, Uber is the world’s largest ride sharing app

Understanding your consumers is essential for success, but you also need to be able to help them with issues they might not even be aware they have. In today's hyperconnected environment, delighting the customer is essential.

Discover how a learning organization can result in competitive advantages.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Competitive Advantage

Lean organizations are firms that have adopted the lean methodology into their business model. Any type of company can implement lean concepts into its organizational structure as these concepts are not limited to production and manufacturing industries.

For example, Seattle Children's Hospital reports that through the use of checklists, continuous brainstorming, and standardization, the medical facility is able to provide more efficient services to patients and make small improvements to eliminate waste. The lean concept looks for ways to eliminate unnecessary resources so that companies can operate with less.

The process begins by identifying things of value. Steps that do not contribute to the value stream should be eliminated so that processes can be completed in a tighter sequence. This should be a continuous process so that businesses are always examining things of value and determining how to achieve optimum performance.

To allow high-performance, it is crucial to align teams and organizations around a vision and a compelling sense of purpose. Additionally, it serves as a vital source of motivation, involvement, dedication, and organizational cohesion.

An organization can plan backward to identify the steps to make it happen by concentrating on the broad picture and creating a vision of what the future will include. This includes the essential new competencies.

In this lesson, you will learn the importance of having alignment in an organization around inspiring visions.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Vision and Purpose Statement

• Impediments

Before Thales transformed their process with the help of Business Agility, the talent acquisition team at Thales was serving the company through partners, who were individually serving different business units within the company.

The talent acquisition leader within the company, Kirsten Booth, saw potential in upskilling her team in how to work in an Agile way. The goal was to increase collaboration and communication between the talent acquisition partners and deliver more value to the business.

Nine months after the transformation began, the team was able to show a 72% increase in performance consisting of higher employee engagement, increased sense of belonging, and enjoyment at work.

Value is fundamentally a matter of opinion for each customer. Therefore, in order to provide unique value and client experiences, business agilitst must have a thorough understanding of how to identify and empathize with their customers.

Discover how tools can increase the overall teams understanding of empathy with customers.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Customer Empathy and Persona Map

The finance team within Griffith University had found their throughput was ‘clogged’ and people were disengaging from their work. The amount of work coming through was in such a high volume that people were only focusing on their own backlog.

The challenge was finding a way to work better together to get products and advice out the door in a way that would also increase work engagement.

By implementing Business Agility, Griffith University’s financial team achieved a permanent shift in mindset and reduced the time spent on processing tasks by 100%, which resulted in a major increase of their throughput.

A growth mindset, or the conviction that one's skills and abilities can be enhanced and improved, is essential for achieving business agility.

In this lesson, we will contrast the attributes of a growth mindset and the limitations of a fixed mindset.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset

Air France KLM Cargo Operations needed to improve the efficiency and productivity of its door-to-door cargo. Time is essential in freight and any delay or break in the chain would lead to product waste and unhappy customers.

It was critical to create a new booking system to improve the efficiency within 6 months.

After following a Business Agility approach to their procurement process, Air France was able to select a vendor and actually start the project within 6 weeks. The team was quickly onboarded and made aware of the business context and challenges. As a result, the booking system was created on time.

The process of change and the journey toward business agility are accelerated by the capacity to perceive and comprehend complex system dynamics.

In this lesson, you will get an overview of frameworks for complex adaptive systems and complexity.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Frameworks for Complex Adaptive Systems

• Management Models

Training hundreds of managers remotely in Business Agility with high impact!

The company’s R&D function engaged in a stepwise Agile transformation. Over 400 leaders within hardware R&D, sourcing, supply chain, quality, commercial, sales, services business, large project unit were trained. The leaders are from all over the world and enjoy learning about Agility without the IT-language.

A completely new way of thinking about work is necessary for business agility, as is lowering the cost of value. When we understand that our organization is a complex system, many old management theories stop being helpful and start limiting how effective we can be. As change agents, we must also be aware of the ways in which our own mental models may have flaws that prevent us from moving forward.

Walk through Mental Models and analyze Cognitive Biases by using models such as ladders of inference.

Key Learning Topics for this lesson include:

• Blind Spots and Mental Biases

• Role of Mental Models

Vero was going through two major change programs, transforming to a customer and user focused organization and to bring in more self-managing and agile ways of working.

They partnered on the executive level to bring the best out in the leadership team, who was preparing to start leading this thorough transformation together. With support in facilitation, challenging and nudging the leadership team formed into a true team, with a strong vision, co-created steps forward and a building trust level rarely seen in public services.