Status Quo Or Strategic Agility?

It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that. ~ The Red Queen, Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

Change Is Never Easy

No one said change would be easy. Some associations and conference hosts just refuse to embrace change of any type.

You turn you head and before you know it, some of these organizations have lost their way and slowly disappear. They lose their appeal. People stop using their services.

Rather than observe what is happening around them, it’s easier for their leaders to keep their nose to the grind and do what they’ve always done, regardless if it still works and meets their purpose.

So they end up in a place where nothing is really as it seems. Confusion reigns. Surrealism taunts. It’s like clinging to a version of reality that the organization wants to be true although it has already slipped past them. They’ve taken a trip down the rabbit hole with Alice into Wonderland.

Developing Strategic Agility

How can associations and conference hosts keep from slipping into their own surrealistic rabbit hole? What can organizations do to stay ahead in a marketplace that is characterized by VUCA-volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, as author Victoria Swisher describes it?

In order to stay in pace with today’s VUCA market, organizations have to learn to adapt and evolve rapidly. Or they get left behind.

Yves DOZ, Solvay Chaired Professor of Technological Innovation, INSEAD, defines strategic agility as,

“The ability to continuously adjust and adapt strategic direction in core business, as a function of strategic ambitions and changing circumstances, and create not just new products and services, but also new business models and innovative ways to create value for a company.”

Fostering Agile Learners

One of the best things associations and conference hosts can do is develop agile stakeholders. Agile organizations need to adapt and remake themselves quickly. And they can’t do that if they don’t have agile stakeholders that see the market, identify the trends, comprehend what is going to impact their profession and industry and adapt.

In order for organizations to succeed in the future, they need to become as fluid as the market. And in order to become fluid, they need people who are as equally agile.

What are some ways organizations can develop and foster agile stakeholders? What have you see organizations offer in order to develop agile leadership?