The Growth of the Agile Workforce

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Agile  

“In 10 years, a Fortune 2000 company will have no employees outside the C-suite.” That’s a quote from Accenture in its latest annual Technology Vision Report. You might dismiss it as an overly dramatic statement designed to grab attention, but that quote has appeared in Forbes magazine and the Wall Street Journal. 

The fact is, agile concepts are fundamentally changing the way people work (and want to work), and that’s going to have a profound effect on every aspect of how organizations operate.

First, the technology-fueled acceleration of business is driving fundamental changes in work. Barriers to entry are coming down, pressures on market share and profitability are increasing, and organizations are having to become leaner and more innovative if they are to survive. Many are failing — 52% of the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 don’t exist anymore. And Deloitte is forecasting that 40% of today’s Fortune 500 won’t exist in 2025.

Surviving and thriving in such an aggressively changing economy requires not just evolution, but revolution — a reinvention of not just what an organization is about, but about how business gets done. The current hot trend is digital transformation, something which should impact every element of an organization from leadership and culture to operations.

The second major factor is also …

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