The Agility Factor: Building Adaptable Organizations for Superior Performance

Foreword

A century ago, a young retailer named James Cash Penney explained to one of his managers how he planned to reorganize their company in new and untried ways, all of which were designed to empower the managers of the small chain of clothing outlets to be responsive to the changing needs of their customers. The manager immediately understood the genius of what Penney was proposing: “What you are planning, sir, is an organization that will always be renewing itself from within!”

We now know Penney had the right idea: truly great business leaders create self-renewing organizations. And that's what Jim Penney achieved at what would become—for a brief period, at least—the world's leading retailer. Unfortunately, Penney lost interest in the ...