Agile: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

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HOW TO MAKE SURE AGILE TEAMS CAN WORK TOGETHER

by Alia Crocker, Rob Cross, and Heidi K. Gardner

Increasing volatility, uncertainty, growing complexity, and ambiguous information (VUCA) have created a business environment in which agile collaboration is more critical than ever. Organizations need to be continually on the lookout for new market developments and competitive threats, identifying essential experts and nimbly forming and disbanding teams to help tackle those issues quickly. However, these cross-functional groups often bump up against misaligned incentives, hierarchical decision making, and cultural rigidities, causing progress to stall or action to not be taken at all.

Consider the case of an organization in our consortium, the ...