If anything positive has come out of Covid-19, it is the realization that there is a real need for organizations, and leaders to truly become agile.

Back in 2018, Mckinsey issued an excellent report on Agile Organizations, which has even more relevance today, the challenge as always is how to apply these mostly western concepts into an Asian and more specifically Vietnamese context.

Based on my experience in instigating and managing change in Asia, I’d recommend the following approach to becoming more Agile as a leader.

Step 1 Awareness of the Essence of Business and Leadership Agility  

This may seem obvious, but it is critical to understand the dimensions of “agile leadership”, it is not as straight forward as you may think. For most people the starting point will be Google; then if you can attend a good seminar where you can have the opportunity to explore with others.

Step 2 Organizational Culture 

Many organizations now include agility as a core value, the problem is changing a core value on paper makes no difference to how the company thinks, and operates. In addition to your own self-assessment of your real organization culture, you might seek out a couple of generation z who work in your area, and find out what they think – most will give surprisingly honest answers.

Step 3 Your Current Leadership Style and Agility

Most modern leaders have undergone some form of leadership profiling, whether it be an on-line assessment such as DISC, or a more traditional assessment such as Situational leadership, which means you should have a sound understanding of how “natural” your agility in leadership is likely to be.  

Step 4 Becoming more Agile

Regardless of whether your current company is agile by design, or not, for the sake of your future career you will need to become more agile. The first thing that needs to change (or perhaps more accurately – be modified) is mindset, followed by approach.

An easy first step is to start using “new” tools such as customer journey mapping, followed by observing / benchmarking your agility against others. The journey, like all journeys starts with the first step; the first step may have been reading this article.

Garry Howell
May 2020