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Rapid and accelerating developments in technology, customer preferences, and employee expectations are transforming all aspects of our lives. To survive and thrive, companies must, in turn, transform how they operate. Becoming an agile organization allows a company to increase speed of execution, better respond and adapt to customer needs, increase productivity, and engage and empower employees. Ultimately, an agile organization can deliver higher returns to shareholders.

Increase speed

Adapt to customer needs

Reduce cost

Empower employees

Why Enterprise Agility?

Historically, big beat small. Scale was a sufficient advantage. Now, fast and adaptive beats slow and steadfast. New technologies, evolving customer preferences and changing employee expectations are fundamentally challenging established ways of working in more and more sectors. It’s time to move beyond a rigid hierarchy, siloed business units, crippling bureaucracy and an increasingly unwieldy matrix. Agile organizations combine the efficiencies of scale with the speed, flexibility and resilience to compete and win in today’s world.

Companies are asking:

  • Why does our organization struggle to move quickly and what can we do about it?
  • How do we empower our people to take more accountability for performance and truly embed customer centricity?
  • How do we organize for both sides of the productivity equation—cost and innovation-driven growth?

What is Enterprise Agility?

A new way of working

Embarking on an agile transformation is a major undertaking, but the benefits are great. Agile organizations move faster, are more adaptable, and foster ownership mind-sets, resulting in greater productivity and reduced cost.

Broadly applicable—not just IT

We believe the principles of agility can be applied across the whole organization, beyond just the IT department. An agile transformation looks throughout the organization to find specific areas where an agile operating model can unlock value. For example, agility in innovation/new-product development can help a company quickly move from idea to prototype in a fraction of the time it takes today.

Agility = Stability + Dynamism

Agile organizations combine stability with dynamism. Stable elements provide direction and an efficient and scalable backbone. A network of dynamic teams then radically increases speed, flexibility, and ownership. The stable and dynamic elements reinforce one another, and both are essential for a truly agile organization.

Why McKinsey?

Link agility to value

We bring both the depth of expertise in agility and the breadth of expertise across capabilities and industries. We bring experience and best practices from successful agile transformations to help quickly identify the greatest pockets of value that can be unlocked by applying the principles of agility.

Sustain and scale agility

Many companies experiment successfully, but scaling up is hard. Only we bring the integrated thinking needed to reimagine how work gets done. We work side by side with you to design the necessary changes to processes, people models, structures, and technology to successfully take agility to an enterprise-wide level.

Shift behaviors and culture

We are uniquely positioned to support the major mind-set shifts required for agility to take root, from the boardroom to the front line. You can’t move the needle on agility without culture change.

A new McKinsey

Our offerings go far beyond the traditional consulting model, including advanced analytics, digital tools and next-generation tech expertise (OrgSolutions, McKinsey Digital), and multidisciplinary agile coaching expertise (Aberkyn).

Featured Insights

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The impact of agility: How to shape your organization to compete

– Insights from over 2,000 global respondents reveal the recipe for an agile transformation that delivers real business impact.
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Agility to action: Operationalizing a value-driven agile blueprint

– To successfully transition to an agile operating model, business leaders should focus on four questions.
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Enterprise agility: Buzz or business impact?

– Many organizations are racing to become agile. New research suggests that agile transformation can have a powerful impact on the... bottom line—in addition to other widely recognized benefits.
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The journey to an agile organization

– You know what an agile organization is, and why it’s important. But figuring out how to pull off an agile transformation... is another question.

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Wouter Aghina
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