Do You Have Agility?

Agility. In the work environment, agility is an organization’s ongoing ability to anticipate, adapt to, and respond decisively to events and trends within its operating environment. It’s a funny paradox – more and more role descriptions are listing agility as a needed skill, yet more and more reports are listing agility as an overused word or skill on personal profiles and resumes.

Agility is often used in concert with “adaptable to change”, which can be true in some contexts I suppose. But true agility is not just about adapting, it’s also about anticipating and responding to the change. It has been my experience that most people stop at adapting. They never anticipated nor effectively responded to the change.

I think a primary reason for this is because most people do not recognize what agility truly is. Like leadership, agility functions as a noun; it's a skill that requires core competencies to be effective. While not all inclusive, here are six core competencies for agility:

• Ability to anticipate change
• Ability to generate confidence
• Ability to initiate action
• Ability to liberate thinking
• Ability to evaluate results

People who effectively demonstrate their agility are marked by their ready ability to move quickly with easy grace, and they have a quick resourceful and adaptive character.

When a role description lists agility as a necessary skill, it includes the above competencies, but when people list agility as a skill, they often omit how they effectively demonstrated it.

An organization’s agility to ever-changing trends and market demands is limited only by its people’s ability to anticipate, adapt to, and respond decisively to the changing environment. If you want to improve one skill that adds value to your organization, consider your agility. By growing your proficiency in its core competencies, you will become more agile.

Question: How effective are you today in your agility?