Tag Archives: agility

Utter Disarray

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“But, don’t we ever get to a point where we are finally, once and for all competent?” Naomi turned her head and looked at me sideways.

“Just so, so, but then it changes,” I replied.

“I mean, we have been working on this new workflow for about a year,” she proudly proclaimed. “We shifted things around until we had the right sequence. There is zero idle time between work steps. Our expected output is right in line with our goals. I believe the team, myself included, is now competent in this new workflow. It took us a while to get here, but I think we made the grade.”

“Competence is not judged by looking at the past,” I said. “We think we understand the world that way, but we don’t live in the past, we live in the NOW. And, we live in anticipation of the future. We may have been competent yesterday, but today is a new day, with new challenges, problems and decisions. You believe your team, including yourself, is now competent in your new workflow. Until when? What could change that puts your fine tuned workflow into utter disarray?”

Agile

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I let others conjecture the path of COVID-19, AND a couple of things are clearer. My focus is not on the pandemic, but your business-model-response to shifting circumstances.

  • The heat of summer in the northern hemisphere will reduce the ability of the virus to survive, creating a seasonal impact. This does not appear to be true.
  • There will be waves of contagion. I don’t know if we are in the second wave or the lingering impact of the first wave. Does it matter? There will be more waves.
  • Hope against hope, there will not be a vaccine until early next year.

Those business models that survive will be those who adapt to reality.

  • Find a market with a business need, set out to solve it.
  • Test the solution to be adequate and understand its value in the market.
  • Determine if the cost of the solution is less than the market value (profit).
  • Determine if the market is large enough (enough profitable transactions) to build a business.
  • Determine the next adaptation required to sustain the business model.

This begs the question of innovation and creativity. What is the agility of your organization?