Issue 5 October 2008
Strategic Agility
Brigid Whoriskey, Head of Research & Innovation, GA&BI, speaks to John Wells to get
an academic’s perspective on agility in the enterprise.
John Wells is a former professor at Harvard Business School, where he
led Strategic Agility courses and numerous executive programmes. He is
now President of the International Institute for Management (IMD) and leads
research programmes into how companies increase their agility through
innovative approaches to strategy, structure and systems. Previously he
worked in the Boston Consulting Group, Pepsico and Frito-Lay and served on
the board of Thomson Travel Group. RBS Business School have established a
partnership with IMD as members of their Corporate Learning Network.
bw» why is agility top of the agenda in so many bw» what stops firms from being agile and
organisations today? adjusting to market changes in a timely fashion?
Jw» Because we are facing tough economic times, Jw» There are three classes of inertia which need to
firms are finding themselves in trouble. The smart ones be overcome to be agile:
can see that they could have weathered the storm better
Strategic inertia is the failure to change strategy in a
if they had been more agile.
timely fashion. To overcome strategic inertia, you need
agile strategy.
The root cause of the problem is often inertia, failure to
change in a timely fashion. To paraphrase Jack Welch
1
,
Structural inertia is at work when the firm cannot
if a firm doesn’t change as fast as its competitive
change, despite the fact that it knows it needs to,
environment then it must eventually fail; it is not a matter
because the organisational structure does not adjust
of “if” but “when”.
fast enough to execute the changing strategy. To
overcome structural inertia, you need agile structure.
Truly agile firms relentlessly strive for greater competitive Personal inertia is the third class, and it drives the first
advantage and sustainability, continuously looking two. Ultimately, the ability of a firm to change is limited
for ways to improve their current strategic model of by the ability and willingness of its people to change.
success, while testing new ones that might disrupt the
status quo.
22 | Perspectives on the future
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28