DRAFT OUTLINE Build your Agility Beyond the Pandemic: Making it Enduring, Sustained, Long Lived

The one thing a crisis does - is drive innovation and change.

But how do you ensure its not a short term, fad response to the pandemic?

Baking it into your new found Orgnisational DNA is one sure way.

The pandemic saw many organisations faced with an existential survival threat, find new ways to work, or else get infected and lie many, sadly pass way.

This forced, on the fly, adopt more nimble, responsive, flexible, adaptive working leveraging technologies and human ingenuity was lie a start up acclerator programm for many.

Well before teh Covid Pandemi of 2020 -2023, Orgnisations were succeffully impelemtning global, dsitrbuted and remote working.

Not all organisations can do this, well many parts can, but sometimes not the frontline services that required the human interaction.

We are seeing a gradual, mostly unwanted pull back to the office, to old ways of working pre-pandemic, regressing mostly to more rigid ways instead of keeping that flexibility, adaptability bought on by it.

Organisations are capable of innovation at speed when they decide to hide a Skunk Works or Special Projects Team from its mainstream bureaucracy using Agile Managment and Agile Methods - Virtual, Remote & Disibtruted Working as one of the many Agile Patterns and Practices.

Corpoate Rebels

If you scan social media, articles and commenetary, people fund a way to become Corproate Rebels. They found and ingnore the usal stiffling BAU processess, staged pahses, gates of the dreaded PMO and became mini CEOs,solving probelms, thier, then, with little to no budget, with a just do it attitude.

Faster Decision Making

Huddles, Break Fix, Hot Potatoe, Crisis, Replenishment Meetings, Toolbox Talks, Scrums...call then what you like...again, decison making seem to spped up, excatly what holds back many compaies, going through commitee after committee to get a simple decison made to act. The Just Do it attuide was forthcmoing.

Space, Thinking Space, Innovation Space

Another thing that trhrived from the padandemic, an we can see how its getting lost again, is that becuase people had the space and tiime to think, they could see clearer, they could decompose trouble, they could use parts of the brain you jsut cant tap into during the hussle, bussle, noise of office politics. THey provide creative solutions faster.

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting

Yes PMOs cuase alot of wait time, waiting for meeetings, waiting for funding, waiting for decisions, becuase they centralise things. During Remote Working, people commicated and collborated more freely and as a result, delveired more. Delviered more becuase they spent more time doing, than waiting, and costs went down as an outcome.

More Releases

Wit less waiting and more doing, more releases were shgipped/deployed into csutomer hands. The fast they get thiere, the more value the comany gts back from usage/consumption, the more feedback you get on quality of expereince, the better, the faster ou cna delvier on needs and wants. INtead of big bangs, waintg for the PMO and inclement old ITIL process checks and balances, a bit more risk taking was done. Online services were booming.

Dualality - Stability with Agility

There is no suhc thing as BAU, nly cosntant change. If you havent leaernt that yet in busienss, then its going to be ahard, long delayed ouch for you. The paademic forced busienss into oing the differntly than before. For the first time, they started to do a little bit of Portfolio and Value Managment, running and exploring/growig the busienss at the same time, instead of running a Demand, Resourcing and Control Meetings - complete and utter anti- patterns of Agile Bsienss Managment.

Reshaping your Architecture

Emerging Tech played its part too. AI, especailly generative AI, however, at what cost, we dont know yet.

One thig many cpomanie sand peopel benefiteed from is the ability to work less on demand, more on when they felt msot compelled, motivated, egnaged too.

Rewiring Leadership

Reinventing the Organisation

Innovation

Conclusion: Building an Anti-Fragile Organisation

Regression, back into bad habits and old ways of woking is rapidly becmoig the norm again. Quit quitting,, absenteeism, low morale and egnagment stacked with mass redundancies as autonomation and automation take over, making traditional managers focused on manamgnete by numbers glee with hapiness, but at what cost to the rest of us, to communities, to scoietites. There short sightned ness is again blinding our abilitites to go forward, onwards & upwards because of thier old mindsets, paradigms from the 1 - 3 Industrial revolutions.