Personal Agility is the most important competency for the future. Based on the Korn Ferry Research, companies with highly agile executives have 25% higher profit margins than their peer groups. Personal Agility in our (AgilityDiscoveries) minds is: interpretation of agile mindsets in today’s modern organizations, impact of the leaders of today, relearning yourself, rerouting capabilities, and improving competencies. People with highly honed Personal Agility can create enhanced Organizational Agility. There are many people who are focused on organizations and at the same time forget about individuals. We are focused on individuals who can and want to change organizations.
While Personal Agility is multi-dimensional, organizations need to strive to be 100% agile. The Personal Agility Lighthouse™ Model (PALH™) is built on seven flavors. AgilityDiscoveries explore the subtleties of getting the organizational outcome through skill sets. It comprises of Learning, Cerebral, Emotional, Education, Change, Political, and Outcomes Agility.
Personal Agility Lighthouse™ Model (PALH™), Raji Sivaraman & Michal Raczka 2017Emotional Agility
Each agility can be addressed in different ways. Every agility can be seen as positive or negative. All of the seven agilities can be applied to any kind of company (large or small) no matter the return of their services. To tolerate change we need Emotional Agility that will kill skepticism, attitudes, unwanted reorganization so as to create a good labor environment. Dealing with conflicts, negotiating with people, managing emotions and much more affects productivity. Moreover, all of these put together plus expectations effect emotions.
Political Agility
Although escalation, hedging and lessons learnt, make valuable tools to win Political Agility, stakeholder interactions and working with given parameters alone also does not guarantee political cautiousness. Full alignment is not achievable if there is hierarchical challenges within an organization in which the structure makes decision-making difficult and takes a long time. We need to move relationships at unions to set different political influences that effect the efficiency of an organization. To negotiate interest benefits with stakeholders being a roadblock makes it difficult to take decisions. If one has to take so many steps to do something, making the person is more important than process sometimes. If work environments have changed, one needs to improve this agility because it is desirable to get things done with the organizational goal in view.
Learning Agility
Not improving speed at the expense of quality and being aware of the different agilities help identify problems at times. Learning improves over time or iterations and that is where Learning Agility can be honed. If you admit that you don’t know everything; then you are open to learn more. Acknowledging that we don’t know all, being open to delta, open to new awareness is the spirit of this agility. Not being afraid of change even when you do not know everything, to explore new discoveries and learning opportunities; will definitely have its impact on the organization as well as the individual too.
Change Agility
Change Agility entails embracing change which is ever present and inevitable. So adapting and being open to others opinions and emotions is key. One example would be discouraging differences between groups (process, tools) and allowing mistakes to be made without trying to punish the decision maker. Consequently creating a unified culture. It is not the same to recognize you are wrong versus you are wrong and saying it. That involves putting yourself in another’s shoes while dealing with political environments because change works when we have options. LRM, the Last Responsible Moment from the Lean Thinking concept can help you select the best option. Too many delta needs quick responses and adaptability. New developments happen every day. Hence, when decisions need to be taken; being adaptive within projects and communicating the vision clearly with what options we have will give the right power to work with concurrent activities. One should find the other projects of an organization with related topics and the decision should be taken together to avoid duplicating efforts.
Educational Agility
Know ourselves to improve and you don’t need to know everything. You can rely on others/experts. Dare to do it even if perfect actions are not a possibility. This is possible by being open to fresh understanding and not being afraid of change. So Education Agility empowers diversity and vice versa. A simple scenario would be educating oneself about the 360 degrees of any contract which will eliminate making/signing a contract too early to avoid wrong decision-making. Have more empathy and knowing oneself are important as well. This part of the education of oneself goes far and above the needs for oneself.
Cerebral Agility
Cerebral Agility is to look for options for more learning, evaluating alternatives on the spot, so on and so forth. Opportunities seldom come by without working your mind and your brain. Using them quickly in an agile manner will get you to the top. Empathy for better teamwork tied to it, will be the winning wave of Outcomes Agility. Always improving, evaluating alternatives, seeking the best options, bringing together shared visions and objectives lead to excellency. Uninspired manpower don’t go the extra mile. Improving speed to deliver results will take care of the ultimate outcomes of safety, housekeeping and hazard training.
Cruise from Personal Agility to Organizational Agility
The goal is to cruise from Personal Agility to Organizational Agility. To preserve the organizational integrity, agility skills provides numerous benefits to organizations, thus rapidly setting up the alignment growth from Personal Agility (PA) to Organizational Agility (OA). This is illustrated in the exhibit below taking into consideration all the seven agilities of the PALH™ Model by AgilityDiscoveries.
Cruise from Personal Agility to Organizational Agility, Raji Sivaraman and Michal Raczka 2017Being more proactive and having the new AgilityDiscoveries perspective for Self Analysis makes interaction of agilities a daily breath. Therefore, we at AgilityDiscoveries have created the Personal Agility Lighthouse™ Index. This is an assessment where every participant in our workshops can learn more about himself/herself to find out which agilities are already honed and which should be further developed. If you take PA Lighthouse™ Index, in intervals, the results may change over time, which is why we call PA Lighthouse™ Index ‘Agile’.
We at AgilityDiscoveries wish you all safe sailings to your desired shores of Personal Agility taking our PALH™ Model as your guiding light.
More info about Personal Agility can be found in the website: www.agilitydiscoveries.com
Featured Papers:
- Raji Sivaraman, Michal Raczka, Cruise from Personal Agility to Organizational Agility, PM World Journal, Vol. VII, Issue II – February 2018
- Interview with Raji Sivaraman and Michal Raczka, PM World Journal, Vol. VI, Issue IX – September 2017
- Raji Sivaraman, Michal Raczka, Jornada Agilidade Pessoal para Agilidade Organizacional, Project Design Management, Brazil, Mar 2018, p. 66-71
- Raji Sivaraman, Michal Raczka, Seven Rudiments of Personal Agility for Construction Agility, International Research Conference 2017 at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund, Jun 2017, p. 164-168
Polish citizen, a project management expert, experienced in new technologies & digital leadership fields. Currently, he is the IT Strategy and Project Management Vice Director at mBank S.A. He is also a project management lecturer at the Executive MBA programs. He has conducted several organi- sational changes involving the optimisation of project management methods and agile transformations. Always keeps Team in the centre. Value and results focused with lean and agile approach. Individual with proven achievements in project & business management, process improvement and team leadership. Experienced in managing geographically distributed, multi-disciplinary projects and customer teams. Experienced in project excellence awards assessments. Conference speaker. Strategic Advisor. Lecturer. Volunteer. Mentor.
Principal of ASBA LLC, a Singapore citizen, helps USA/Singapore companies with stra- tegic planning/overseas startups. Speaks several languages. Worked in Singapore, Thailand, India and the USA. Helps fortune 50/500 companies with CSR/BSR projects. Consultant, Director, Strategic Advisor and an Advisory Board member for non-profit organizations. Worked in IT, publishing, fi- nancial, standards and logistics industries. An Adjunct Professor at Montclair Univer- sity, USA. Researcher, Author, Contributor to Project Management books, published articles, research and white papers interna- tionally. Global facilitator, keynote speaker, Discussant/Academic chair/Moderator CXO Forum and a panelist. An Agile practitioner with a Master of Science Degree in Project Management. Held leadership positions with the Project Management Institute at the chapter/global level and conducts workshops around the world. In a nutshell, she is a Pracademic.