There’s been plenty of buzz in recent years about the “ real-time” or “agile” enterprise, but turning a company in that direction is difficult. The reason: Most organizations cling to a hierarchical management structure, with decision-making left to a handful of top executives and their lieutenants left waiting around for marching orders. So says Michael H. Hugos, a Computerworld columnist and author of The Greatest Innovation Since the Assembly Line: Powerful Strategies for Business Agility. Hugos, a former CIO at Network Services Co., answered questions from Computerworld about the chief obstacles to business agility and the steps needed to make IT departments and corporations more nimble.
What are the biggest obstacles preventing companies from becoming agile, and how can they be overcome? It’s not about rigid, pyramid-
shaped hierarchies. It’s about autonomous networks [of people] who are empowered to figure out how to get things done.
But right now, that jealous guarding of corporate hierarchy is based on prerogatives. Those are the trappings that are going to have to dissolve because they’re don’t inspire much value anymore. It has to continue to decentralize.
I answer this at the end of the book with a test on how to measure your agility. Give your people clearly defined performance objectives and the authority to figure out for themselves how they will achieve those objectives. Then you can put them through agility training.
The wrong way is to coin a slogan, kick off a major campaign, corporate BS as usual. So don’t do it; let your actions be your ambassador.
you talk a lot in your book about Whole foods Market. What makes it so successful? its decentralized structure and focus on autonomous work teams? Yes. And the fact that the autonomous work teams get more than an “attaboy” for it. Each store team is told to make a certain profit. How they do
that is up to them. So those teams run their own profit and loss on a quarterly basis.
Their incentive is to be out there on the floor working with customers and team members. That kind of responsiveness is what makes them so profitable. That’s the heart of agility. You start finding ways to loosen the strictures and stultifying behavior that goes with the classic corporate model.
How can people be motivated to
transform the way they work or the
way they approach work?
You still have the pyramid
shape, and decisions still
have to get passed up to the
big cheese, and he becomes a
bottleneck. He can be scram-
bling like a hamster 24 hours a
“. . . the ability to
respond quickly but
appropriately.
You have to have put
in place standards
and processes to
make fast but
controlled responses.
In addition, you have
to be able to think in
flexible terms. Agility
requires you to step
out of a black-and-
white mode and to
see multiple options,
which you need to
weigh, then make a
choice that accom-
plishes your goals.”
EArL MOnsOur,
DirEctOr Of strAtEgic
infOrMAtiOn tEcHnOLOgiEs,
MAricOPA cOunty cOMMunity
cOLLEgE District
day and not be able to keep up while everybody else [in the or-ganization] is waiting around.
Agility happens in the middle of the organization. I call that “the benign conspiracy of middle management.” The number of hours you log in your cube is irrelevant. Are you getting measurable things done? If so, it doesn’t matter where you do your work.
What kind of rewards can be used as an incentive for more agile behavior? Tell people there’s money in it. There’s a book called The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack, written before this was all called agile. With performance targets, if you don’t meet your goals, there’s no bonus. At Springfield ReManufacturing, 20% to 30% of compensation is based on hitting these performance targets.
I don’t want to sound too cute here, but where others see obstacles, learn to find the opening. Agility is the ability to size up a situation quickly and figure out where the leverage points are.
You don’t just throw money at it. Massive, multizillion-dollar campaigns are fun, but they often bog down and create a lot of disappointment. Agility starts with iterative, short-term work.
is training often overlooked? Absolutely. Training is the most overlooked best practice. We’ll spend money to get you great technology, and we’ll save money by tossing out the training and point you to where it is online. Yeah, right. What you get is this ludicrous situation where a company gets this really great technol-
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