Shared Conscience ... Business Agility at Work

When Leaders talk about Teams and Business Agility, they pledge a commitment to share ideas, content and goals.  Too often, however, this shared conscience goes no further than the written motto, email, or meeting.  Leadership must embrace the autonomy of teams and their independent ability to make decisions and meet their goals and objectives. It is human nature for those in power to jealousy guard it. In the business arena, data and access is the power that leaders hoard. They in turn keep or silo information via software that others cannot use; assets and results are stove-piped, resulting in countless hours wasted, poor communication, and incomplete or invalid information from which to make decisions.

Making your organization more agile takes a different kind of commitment. Leadership must hand over control to teams, holding them accountable to the overall goals of the organization, but giving them the tools and freedom to work and succeed. Business agility comes at another price - change - and that has a negative impact on legacy.  To be agile, we must implement the journey mindset within our organization, and charge our teams with an end-result in mind, as well as provide access to data, budget and support. By building Agility into the team mindset and rewarding them throughout the process, leadership engages teams to successfully serve the end goal, the customer.    

In our increasingly competitive marketplace, we see a pervasive shift in mission statements identifying the customer as of primary significance, whether in big pharma, startups, or large public institutions. The client is king and running an organization that mandates teams keep the customer top-of-mind means projects are completed with more efficiency and with better results. Business agility allows systems, information and decisions to be transparent up, down and across the organization and provides a frictionless environment to ensure attainment of goals. Freeing data from hierarchy constraints opens the entire team up to a full view of the mission from the onset and cements their commitment to the journey. 

Applying the concept of shared consciousness throughout your organization brings accountability and alignment to the corporate mission. Applying this discipline across small, multiple teams that are in sync with the organization’s mission and goals brings clarity and focus to the end goal, the customer. Each part of your organization can function as a single pane of glass with a holistic view of its objectives and programs. Business Agility allows all members, from skilled practitioners to the C-suite, to track, measure and adjust data, projects and output; and in the process work smarter, with increased speed and performance. Change is inevitable. Leadership can embrace it and implement how it affects their organization, or they can stagnate and grow invalid.  

Moe Jafari, CEO, CORAS

https://www.coras.com