Netarchy as a driver of agile business transformation

An agile company is one in which all its employees, regardless of their position in the organizational chart, have the possibility of being entrepreneurs

It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is a significant gap between the pace of change that is necessary to compete in a digital world and the pace of change that most organizations are capable of keeping up with. We necessarily have to rethink what we want our organizations to look like in the future and put a greater focus on the Agile business transformation as one of the core competencies that a company must have to survive and thrive in a world of accelerated change.

So what can be done to achieve this? How do you respond quickly and agilely enough in a world of accelerated change? How do we achieve the strategic agility we need to grow and be relevant in a changing world?

 

Agile business transformation as an answer

Originally, the concept of “Agile” emerged in the software development environment, as a set of four values, as established in the
Agile Manifesto
and 12 principles, supported by underlying methodologies with the primary goal of improving the effectiveness of software delivery. The concept has evolved into a set of agile methodologies such as Scrum and XP, which make software development an iterative and incremental process. While agile practices and processes bring benefits through collaboration, visibility, and transparency, if there’s one thing we’ve learned in more than ten years dedicated to developing agile solutions, it’s that you can Implement an agile methodology and maintain it Only if the team is “being agile,” i.e., if it has the right mindset and exhibits related behaviors. Hence, the Business agility is more a matter of culture and principles than processes.

Agility, on the other hand, is an attribute that can be applied to a business. In the context of business, agility is the organization’s ability to anticipate an opportunity or threat, adapt, and react efficiently and effectively.

Business agility is three-dimensional. On the one hand, it has a Strategic Dimension that allows you to spot and take advantage of new innovation opportunities before competitors. One Tactical dimension that gives you the ability to transfer resources, organizational talent, and management focus to new strategic initiatives. And finally a An operational dimension that allows you to maintain results while exploring the new opportunities of a complex and rapidly changing world.

More than just a process or methodology, organizational agility is essentially the company’s ability to dynamically plan strategies, accurately perceive changes in its external environment, and empower its employees to take the initiative and respond flexibly to new challenges.

That is why we say that the level of agility of a company depends to a large extent on the fact that its professionals, in addition to their job in the organizational chart, have an open contribution framework that allows them to explore new opportunities, evaluate new challenges and respond and adapt to changes. In other words, so that they can act as true entrepreneurs, anticipating windows of opportunity and launching the necessary innovation initiatives.

There are many companies that have been betting on agility as a key lever to accelerate their digital transformation for several years and the projects in which I have collaborated have allowed me to see first-hand that the difficulty of applying agility at a business level, beyond software development teams, is not so much in the processes, nor in the methods, as well as in the culture of the organizations and their structures.

 

A Matter of Organizational Structure

We therefore have to face the need for new organizational structures to interact with the new reality and the fact that the new imperatives of business agility are not achievable only with the hierarchical, highly centralized and bureaucratic structures that we have built since the first industrial revolution.

Organizations in the future must show the dual capacity to be dynamic and stable at the same time. Dynamic practices allow companies to respond nimbly and quickly to new challenges and opportunities, while stable practices allow us to maintain day-to-day operations and operational results. Agility is not incompatible with stability, quite the opposite. Agility requires stability for most businesses.

To master this paradox, as we have seen in previous reflections, a redesign of the organizational structure is necessary

that has not one, but two structures. A structure focused on achieving the day-to-day results of business and a second complementary structure, operating as an agile network, focused on the new opportunities and demands of the future.

The network structure consists of autonomous, multi-disciplinary teams that operate in rapid cycles of exploration and learning as true internal startups guided by a shared purpose to create value for the organization as a whole. This second agile operating model has the ability to quickly and efficiently adapt its strategy, structure, processes, people and technology to new business opportunities, creating competitive advantage. Traditional management and entrepreneurial management can work together. It is about adopting operational duality as a process of transformation of the organizational structure in order to move towards a more efficient and iterative working method.

Networks are a natural way to organize efforts because they balance personal leadership with collective innovation. Therefore, in order to build In agile organizations, leaders need to understand the potential of networking and networking as a driver of the necessary transformation towards business agility.

 

Netarchy as a driver of agility

The
Netarchy
It is the natural structure of new networked organizations, facilitates innovation and makes it possible for entrepreneurs within the organization to opt for those contributions that most motivate them and that best align with their own skills. In the networkarchy, tasks can be chosen and not imposed, and the decision-making capacity of each person is determined by their personal reputation and the added value they bring to the organization.

The objectives of the change and the initial communication are set by the management, but the change is created and propagated through the network based on corporate activism, social imitation and the influence of a few individuals, bearers of desirable behaviors, who act as nodes for the dissemination of new behaviors based on their connectivity. closeness and high credibility in the organization. That change is driven by many people and from all departments, not just the usual ones, is a fundamental characteristic of agile organizations.

The redarchy thus increases the capacity for adaptation and change of the entire structure, facilitating collaborative innovation and corporate activism as a mechanism to mobilize participation, identify resistance to change and promote the necessary innovation initiatives.

Ultimately, redarchy allows us to do more than just cling to the achievements of the past and to be able to evolve hand in hand with young people, whose values are those of the social web, towards a fundamentally new business model. If we manage to successfully implement operational duality as a new business management methodology, we will be able to successfully overcome the strategic challenges of a digital world and configure an organizational model that makes innovation and leadership everyone’s job.

 

Organizational Innovation Consulting

Implementing networking in our company and its organizations/departments is not an easy task, as it requires a change in the business culture, in the operational processes and in communication and collaboration. For this reason, if you need to be accompanied by a
A consulting firm with experience in organizational innovation
, contact
Cabrera Management Consultants
. We are the creators of the concept of redarchy.