Agility or control, which one is the boss asking for? Both! That’s the smart-alike answer that confounds many project managers and leaders. Imagine navigating the twists and turns of an initiative with grace and ease, inviting change instead of fearing it by recognizing the power of “and” versus “or.” Agility is not merely about being light on our feet; it encompasses a mindset that anticipates and embraces change and uncertainty. It is the ability to think on our feet to respond quickly and effectively to new situations. Like a skilled dancer, agility allows us to move fluidly through life’s ever-changing choreography. Think of water – it effortlessly adapts its shape to fit any container. What’s required to shape ourselves for any circumstance, harnessing the power of flexibility and resilience without compromising our authenticity and values? Like water, we can consider our circumstances and context more holistically. Of the many influences on our experience, one is in our control to choose and that’s to live sovereign. When we accept responsibility for an inner authority to decide how we relate to any circumstance or context, we access agility to respond rather than react to feeling out of control. Leaders who overlook this critical intersection of control through choice and agility to choose how to relate to a given circumstance will experience paralyzing resistance to change. Here’s an example of this idea.
Knowledge management automation generates a typical sabotage response in customer service call centers. Successful implementation requires agents to ‘teach’ the system despite the natural feeling that doing this well puts their job security at risk, being replaced by technology. Top leadership perceives that this initiative removes a top barrier to agent satisfaction. That includes agent boredom and burnout answering common questions, insufficient time to optimize human interactions for problems that tech can’t solve and creating more opportunities to solve more exciting customer problems.
Agent turnover is costly in terms of periods without a sufficient number of agents, plus the cost of replacement, time for training, and ramp to become productive. However, leadership must include the costs associated with the importance of culture, workplace climate, change management, and talent retention. Having a basis for the business case that secures funding by focusing primarily on finance and IT excludes an equally significant impact on customer retention and brand reputation for quality service.
When the resistance becomes paralyzing for most organizations, they pause and rethink. Rethinking could occur sooner, before investment decisions are made, by being more systemic and holistic, agile with team members, and planful to control focus on systemic outcomes. For example, investment proposals could connect the customer service agent experience to customer outcomes and use those as the financial basis rather than only using technology to optimize live agent deployment expenses. Leaders could provide more transparency about this technology rollout’s impact on agent job security. Crafting change messages to generate some WIFM for participation in the project that results in a job that’s more fun and satisfying while also ensuring job security offers a solution to resistance and more certain job security.
One of my customers used a systemic approach to the change management design and expanded the measures of success. It allowed for a more inclusive experience for IT and the front-line agents to drive customer outcomes, not just do something cool with tech. A focus on customer outcomes led to more creative thinking about what content to put in the knowledge management system, opened up thinking about how to reward agents to identify new topics, and shifted thinking about the purpose of customer surveys to control sufficient quality, to identifying agents who demonstrated agility.
For one of my customers, agent turnover reduced from 22% to 12%, closer to the industry average, and engagement scores improved by 10% for questions related to “my boss asks for and listens to my ideas” and “my boss cares about my satisfaction.” Essential to a highly engaged workforce, these two questions reinforced to leadership that being agile with people’s needs and using a systemic approach to control for the unexpected produced the best outcomes.
The unknown can be daunting, yet it is also brimming with opportunity. As we cultivate agility, we learn to see the unknown as an invitation to grow and expand our horizons. To cultivate agility, we must engage in practices that build our mental and emotional agility. Cultivate a growth mindset, seek new challenges, or embrace discomfort as a catalyst for growth. Believe that our most significant growth lies beyond our comfort zones. As leaders, we have the privilege to be more faithful to our relationships than our duty. In that choice, we invite our teams to tap into more of themselves, rising to meet the unknown with faith in their ingenuity and capacity to learn anything and to do this while having the full faith and support of leadership.
Professionally, agile individuals thrive in rapidly changing environments, leading others with ease and adaptability. Embracing agility grants us the resilience to weather the storms and the clarity to navigate unchartered territories. At the heart of agility lies the recognition that people are the lifeblood of any endeavor. Like vibrant threads woven into a tapestry, each person brings unique talents, perspectives, and aspirations. By nurturing and empowering the individuals involved, we create the foundation for agility and organizations to thrive.