Business Agility

Bridge Strategy with Fast Execution

Business agility is a topic for every organisation. Many companies for example have great strategies on paper, but struggle when it comes to executing them efficiently. They also face challenges to adapt to changes in the market, technology, or competition. Are you asking yourself how to connect strategy with fast, adaptive execution and make your business more responsive to change?

The 80 20 rule for business agility

Key Challenges

Business agility is bridging the gap between high-level strategy and real-world execution in an effective way, being able to respond fast to feedback. Common challenges include:

  • Strategy Execution Gaps: Ensuring your brilliant strategy translates into real, tangible action by your teams.
  • Misalignment Between Teams and Leadership: Connecting every level of the organization to the overall strategy and goals.
  • Inability to Adapt: Creating systems that allow for quick adaptations when external changes occur—be it market demands, new technology, or competitor strategies.
  • Slow Feedback and Poor Responsiveness: Establishing data-driven feedback loops that keep you responsive and ready to pivot.
  • Focus: In addition to connecting strategy with execution, one of the biggest challenges companies face is focus. Many organizations try to tackle too many strategic initiatives at once, diluting their efforts across multiple projects. This lack of focus leads to:
    • Overextended Resources: Teams spread too thin, losing efficiency.
    • Delayed Time to Market: With too many parallel efforts, initiatives take longer to complete.
    • Misalignment: Leaders and teams may lose sight of the organization’s core goals due to scattered attention.

A simple approach to business agility in 5 Steps

  1. Apply the Pareto principle: You can break down large, complex initiatives into manageable, iterative steps by using the 80/20 rule, identifying the vital 20% of initiatives that will yield 80% of the impact, ensuring they focus on what truly moves the needle.
  2. Transparency & Baseline Assessment: You can start by assessing the current level of transparency within your organization and establish a clear baseline for measuring success. This includes understanding how well your strategy is communicated and how aligned your teams are with your goals.
  3. Introducing Feedback Loops: Implement effective feedback loops, using data to ensure that your strategy can adapt to changes quickly and efficiently. Whether it’s market shifts, competitor actions, or technological advancements, your business will be ready to respond.
  4. Parallel Team Development: Business agility isn’t just about improving portfolio management. Work in parallel with your delivery teams, ensuring they are developing the skills and structures needed to cope with rapid changes and provide timely, relevant feedback. This way, agility isn’t just a leadership initiative—it becomes a core part of how your teams operate.
  5. Incremental Change & Measurement: Coach leadership and teams on how to drive incremental changes based on real data. Constantly measure success, adjusting where necessary, so that your business can stay agile while working toward its larger strategic goals.

The Benefits of Business Agility: Shorter Time to Market

Instead of waiting for long-term projects to potentially fail at the end, you move incrementally and learn faster from each iteration. This allows your business to:

  • Identify Successes and Failures Early: By working in smaller, iterative cycles, you gain quick feedback from the market, making it easier to pivot when necessary.
  • Reduce Risk: Shorter cycles mean less risk of investing time and resources into ideas that won’t succeed.
  • Capture Market Opportunities Faster: You’ll be able to launch products, services, or updates more quickly, gaining a competitive edge and learning from real-world results.
  • Adapt More Easily: When feedback is built into the process, you can adjust your strategy based on real-time data, ensuring that you stay ahead of market changes.

How do my services serve improving business agility

Through coaching and facilitation, I help leadership teams align strategically and work cohesively, ensuring smoother execution of business strategies. My advisory expertise assists senior leadership in avoiding major course corrections by embedding structure and best practices that enhance agility, responsiveness, and strategic focus.

Read more about my services

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash