Organizational Agility in Practice

In the twentieth-century the organizational focus was on size and efficiency, economies of scale. Corporations became huge sprawling global organizations which could produce goods in astonishing numbers at a highly consistent quality. The zenith of this was the concept of zero defects which was one of the big management ideas of the tail-end of the century.

Mass production, the creation of the modern global corporation and high-quality manufacturing were formidable achievements. They should not be dismissed, but time moves on and so, too, does organizational best practice. We have moved from the era of zero defects to one of what Zhang Ruimin, the inspirational CEO of the Chinese company Haier, calls “zero distance”. Technology has broken down barriers between producer and consumer. The better we understand and respond to this new reality, the better placed we will be.

To achieve zero distance with your customers requires a very different sort of organization: one that is fundamentally agile in its thinking and activities; one that is willing to change and able to change as consumers and markets dictate. Agility is the new organizational benchmark. Join us in exploring what this means not just in theory, but in best practice.