Cutting through Complexity with Business Agility
Enabling change, innovation and strategic directives—faster and smarter
IBM Global Business Services

ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/pdfs/BFW14001USEN.pdf

We often talk about the critical need for companies to be ambidextrous—they have to be great at many things and processes. This is a key component of implementing innovative solutions. The IBM study puts this in context of being agile.

It’s a complex business world. A simple statement, but one rich with many implications, and a reflection of an economic environment driven by change, complexity and uncertainty. To learn how today’s companies are dealing with these changing  economic realities, IBM interviewed 1,500 CEOs in face-to face conversations as part of the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study…. 

…The IBM Business Agility Study surveyed companies in the financial, insurance and healthcare industries, investigating business leadership, strategies, technologies, and how agility impacts business transformation. Each company in our study achieved significant business results and described themselves as agile. The study revealed that agility can be a powerful tool for cutting through the complexities currently dominating the corporate landscape.... 

…Agility is the ability to respond quickly to change and, simultaneously, it is a force of change. It is permeating a new mindset that:  

• Embodies creative leadership: Companies now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics. Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation. To connect with and inspire a new generation, they must lead and interact in entirely new ways. 

• Reinvents customer relationships: Customers have never had so much information or so many options. CEOs and companies are making “getting connected” to customers their highest priority to better predict trends and provide customers what they really want. 

• Builds operational dexterity: Companies must redesign operating strategies for ultimate speed and flexibility. They must seek ways to create new and elegantly simple products, services and customer interactions that deliver greater value 

Providing creative leadership, reinventing customer relationships and establishing operational dexterity address different business matters, but there is an underlying fundamental current that pulses through these business goals—agility.