Every business has learned a lot about themselves so far in 2020. We’ve learned that we weren’t as prepared as we thought we were for the challenges we might face. We’ve learned just how quickly we can adapt when we have no choice. And we’ve learned that no matter how much effort we put into building the right strategies, they can be destroyed in an instant.
To be fair, no one could have foreseen the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, but we have all been forced to learn some very tough lessons very quickly. But there have been some positives as well. We’ve learned that individually and collectively our employees are far more resilient than we thought, that they are capable of adapting to severe disruption very quickly. As we start to look to the future, we now have to find a way to leverage those positives to help overcome the negatives. That’s where the concept of enterprise agility comes in.
Put simply, enterprise agility is the ability of a business to identify new and emerging threats and opportunities, to identify which of those need to be responded to, and to implement that response with minimal disruption and maximum effectiveness. And that’s going to be pretty important in the coming months and years! Without enterprise agility efforts at digital transformation are going to be slowed and success will be limited. And that will put a business significantly behind its competitors – as far back as April of this year Microsoft’s CEO reported that he had seen “two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.” Things have only accelerated since then.
Enterprise agility isn’t just a more effective way of working, it’s a different way of thinking, a different approach to how business gets done. That’s going to be important in an environment where people are going to have to work differently than they did before. Creating an environment where everyone is aligned, everyone is focused on the same goals and a common way of achieving them, becomes crucial. Delivering a culture where change is not just expected, but embraced as an opportunity to deliver better solutions, is going to be the differentiator that allows businesses to deliver sustainable, innovation driven value. As Forrester notes, “Enterprise speed flows from a culture that values constant experimentation and constant questioning of norms and assumptions.” In other words, encourage people to experiment and innovate and you’ll accelerate your business.
How do you achieve that? ServiceNow has identified five key pillars of enterprise agility – things that businesses can do today to help create an environment that can deliver better solutions in less time and with less disruption. You can learn more about those pillars, and how to begin the process of implementing them, by joining our webinar at noon Eastern on Tuesday July 21st – register here. Industry expert Andy Jordan will join ServiceNow’s own Doug Page and Jim Tisch to discuss the pillars, explore ways to begin evolving your business to embrace those pillars, and answer your questions. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to set your business up for a faster, more powerful recovery that will also serve as a springboard for future success.
Additionally, you can subscribe to our IT Business Management Enterprise Agility podcast episodes for more insights and discussions. To subscribe to the podcast episodes, use your favorite podcast channel: Apple, Google, or Spotify. Listen to Episode 2 and Episode 4 as they have great discussions on this relevant topic.
