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Harnessing Agile

Harnessing agile

This collection explores the structural and cultural shifts required to go agile, as well as the surprising amount of conviction and personal changes required from senior leaders. It also features executives from a range of industries sharing stories of their journeys to becoming agile.

Organizing for agility

Report

The five trademarks of agile organizations
– Agile organizations—of any size and across industries—have five key elements in common.
Survey

How to create an agile organization
– Transforming companies to achieve organizational agility is in its early days but already yielding positive returns. While the paths can vary, survey findings suggest how to start.
Article - McKinsey Quarterly

Unleashing the power of small, independent teams
– Small, independent teams are the lifeblood of the agile organization. Top executives can unleash them by driving ambition, removing red tape, and helping managers adjust to the new norms.
Article

How to mess up your agile transformation in seven easy (mis)steps
– The journey to become agile is challenging. But your organization can avoid some common pitfalls that we have seen companies encounter, including failing to create buy-in around an aspiration and forgetting to put culture first.

Building agile leadership and capabilities

Article

Leading agile transformation: The new capabilities leaders need to build 21st-century organizations
– To build and lead an agile organization, it’s crucial that senior leaders develop new mind-sets and capabilities to transform themselves, their teams, and the organization.
Article - McKinsey Quarterly

Leading with inner agility
– Disruptive times call for transformational leaders with a knack for addressing complex problems. To navigate effectively, we must learn to let go—and become more complex ourselves.
Article - McKinsey Quarterly

The agile manager
– Who manages in an agile organization? And what exactly do they do?
Blog Post

Busting a digital myth: The naturally gifted product owner
– World-class product owners are made, not born. It takes time, investment, and a bit of sweat to become great.

Executive voices

Interview - McKinsey Quarterly

Digging deep for organizational innovation
– Organizational simplicity. Clear accountabilities. Nimble planning processes. All characterize a scrappy oil and gas company you may not have heard of. Learn more from its CEO.
Interview - McKinsey Quarterly

Safe enough to try: An interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
– Organizations are more likely to innovate and thrive when they unleash the potential of individuals and the power of self-organizing teams, says the online retailer’s CEO.
Interview

How to go agile enterprise-wide: An interview with Scott Richardson
– Successfully scaling agile starts with a strategy that’s consistent from the front lines to the C-suite.
Interview

Bringing agile to IT infrastructure: ING Netherlands’ agile transformation
– IT executives seldom associate agile with infrastructure. In this interview, the head of ING Netherlands’ IT infrastructure function explains how his team carried out an agile transformation.