Leading for Organisational Change

Chapter 12Agility

We shape ourself

to fit this world

and by the world

are shaped again

David Whyte¹

If there were a hundred possible contenders for the title of the last chapter, there were only ever two A's in the running for this one. I wanted to call this chapter ‘Agility’ because I wanted it to be the place where we could explore what it means to be able to move, as organisations and as individuals, quickly, nimbly and elegantly into a new space. This is different, although linked, to the idea laid out in Chapter 10 that organisations should strive to be evolutionary in their approach. Agility is about a leap more than a sideways shuffle, and the impetus for it tends more often to be external – a shift in the market, the tantalising glimpse of a new opportunity as it dances past.

But Mark Humphries, the former CEO of Huntswood, who led its cultural transformation and subsequent rebrand in 2005, and is now a non-executive advisor to several lucky boards and, it turns out, to me, suggested that this chapter should be called ‘Acceleration’ instead. As we talked through the key ideas in this book over coffee, testing them against his experiences at Huntswood, we got to talking about purpose and momentum. Mark says that, in his experience, a sense of momentum matters almost as much as a purpose, which is to say that while some people get on the bus because they are excited about where the bus is going, some people get on the bus because they are excited just to be moving. I ...