In an increasingly complex and shifting environment, developing reactivity and adaptation is essential to the overall performance. In what ways can you act to reinforce your teams’ agility?
Deal with uncertainty
Rather than vainly trying to anticipate everything, it is more important to catch significant changes in time.
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Implement the means to follow developments in your environment, even minor ones, e.g. Set up a system to collect information from the field, get beyond your company boundaries to observe changes that are not yet impacting you.
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Don’t wait for the « perfect plan » before taking action, e.g. Schedule milestones at which you will decide to continue or cancel a project.
Progress through iterative adjustments
In a changing environment, too detailed a plan can hinder adaptability.
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Rather than leading projects in a linear manner, adopt iterative learning cycles.
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Constantly review your objectives according to the results thus far achieved.
Fight inertia actively
Uncertainty should not constitute a pretext for not acting.
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Regularly articulate everyone’s roles and responsibilities to ensure no one is thinking someone else is taking care of a specific task.
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Involve the people you expect to be reactive from an early stage: they will have the required knowledge to adapt in real time.
Take action
Keep track of your intuitions (30 min)
In complex situations, our intuition can constitute a strong asset if we learn to use it well.
Faced with different options, note your intuition: what are the options that you don’t feel comfortable with and why, which make you feel doubtful although you don’t really know why? Don’t try and filter your feelings, but make a systematic note of them.
Also make a note of the decision you have taken and the reasons that motivated it.
A few weeks or a few months later, review your notes to analyze this decision. Was it the right one? Which of your intuitions turned out true, which were erroneous? Step by step, refine your hunches through these learning experiences.
Practical Tips
> How to implement decisions more swiftly?
Find out more
> Take action despite uncertainty
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