Organizational Agility Doesn’t Have to Be Scary

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   Organizational Project Management  

I love the idea of organizational agility, or enterprise agility as it is sometimes referred to. I’ve been pushing clients toward embracing the concept for several years because I firmly believe it’s a more engaging and effective way of working, and an approach that can drive success.

While there are numerous different models, think about organizational agility simply as the ability to build an enterprise that is capable of responding quickly and effectively when new threats or opportunities emerge.

A new report from PMI, Change-Ready and Able: Building Agility Into the Organizational DNA, suggests that the message of organizational agility is getting through: 53% of COOs say that increasing agility is very important.

But the report also suggests that there is a disconnect between what is considered important and what is actually happening—referencing the fact that only 33% of respondents to PMI’s 2021 Pulse of the Profession® report indicated that they had achieved high levels of organizational agility.

Why such a disconnect? Is organizational agility difficult to achieve? Are there multiple barriers that need to be overcome? Is the process too disruptive to businesses trying to recover from the events of the last few years?

No, it’s none of those things. It’s just a bit scary because it’s different—and …

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