
KEEP YOUR ORGANISATION UPDATED
BENCHMARKING • LEARNING • KNOWLEDGE • NETWORKING

THEME AND TOPIC
Business agility refers to distinct qualities that allow organisations to respond rapidly to changes both in internal and external environments without losing their core business focus. The main core and the most essential qualities in business agility are adaptability, flexibility, and balance.
At this event, you will hear and see different cases from different business areas. These cases will show the latest information on business agility and teach you how to make your organisation thrive in a complex and uncertain environment.
STRATEGY-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT
Strategy driven development is the discipline of implementing your strategy in small measurable pieces, assessing the results, and adjusting according to the results, while simultaneously managing the big picture and making sure the pieces fit together.
Most organisations have been improving in two key areas over the last 5–10 years:
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strategy – how to understand the changing landscape and determine what
the company should strive towards -
agile development – how to develop fast in small increments using
cross-functional teams and agile methodologies.
Despite advances in strategy and agile development, many companies still struggle in executing their strategy. The common pitfalls are:
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lack of shared understanding or commitment to the strategy on the ‘ground floor’
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strategy is not distilled into specific content
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development efforts are not truly aligned with strategy
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decision-making based on continuous assessment of the impact of development efforts
By learning the key principles and practices of strategy-driven development, your organisation will be able to close the strategy-execution gap.


PEOPLE AND CULTURE
While process and structure play a big role in business agility, the foundation of it is formed by people and culture. Unless your culture supports business agility and your people have the right competences, it is unlikely the practices will stick.
Psychological safety is a must. Business agility is a journey into uncertainty. Many of the experiments will fail – that is a given when your organisation is creating something new and pushing boundaries. Unless your culture enables people to embrace this and focus on learning, there will be a strong urge to play it safe and only focus on improving what already exists, not creating something new.
To succeed in this area of business agility, you must be the winner in these three categories:
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leadership – leading by example
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culture – creating and sustaining the right organisational habits
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recruitment – hiring with cultural fit, not just skills and experience in mind
Having the right leadership model and culture is also key for talent acquisition. Organisations are increasingly competing for the right talent. Having a culture that encourages learning, personal development, and collaboration will increasingly be the deciding factor when the best talent makes their choices.
ORGANISATIONAL TRANSFORMATION
‘The only constant in life is change’.
In these turbulent and quickly changing times, the ability to transform an organisation in addition to developing new products and services is vital. Many organisations understand the importance of being able to change, but yet struggle to do so in practice. Turning a large ship around is never an easy task, but having a good understanding of the basic building blocks of successful transformation will give your organisation a head start:
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Shared vision and collaborative goal-setting
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Experimentation and meaningful milestones
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Sharing learning in an effective way (with context)
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Creating structures that guide your journey
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Organisational habits
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Skill development and coaching
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Continuous improvement
We will share good practices based on current scientific knowledge and practical case studies from organisations that have undergone successful transformations. The conference will also bust the highly common myths about organisational change that are likely to hold your organisation back.
Learning to successfully transform your organisation is a significant investment, but one that will be put into good use because if there is one lesson that history teaches us, it is that the need to constantly reinvent yourself is permanent.
