Organisations need employees who adapt to unexpected changes, as well as recognise opportunities and capitalise on them for the good of the business. They also need people who will foster change and who are innovators, visionaries, trendsetters, initiators and implementers. Personal agility means adopting a flexible mindset that promotes not only the generation but also the implementation of original, valuable ideas.
Agile individuals create agile organisations, which in turn move quickly to spot and exploit opportunities in today’s fast-changing environments.
Research tells us that approximately 80% of agility is learned and acquired. However our minds are anchored by our cognitive biases, many of which are subconscious, but learned throughout our lives. By bringing awareness of these learned biases to the forefront, we can actually learn to reduce or even eliminate them.
In order to do this we deliver TRACOM’s Unlocking Personal Agility course, which teaches people about their mindset and the biases that prevent them from optimising their own personal agility. This helps attendees to gain practical strategies to enhance their agility. This course is heavily informed by experimental cognitive psychology.
What is important to recognise is that while people have the potential to cause positive change, they are often held back by their mindset. We have all developed automatic, entrenched ways of thinking and perceiving the world.vi While these mental habits are helpful in some ways, such as in making routine choices, they impede innovative thinking. One longitudinal study conducted on young children showed that 98% of them score at genius level in their ability to generate many solutions to problems. But, over the course of time, this capacity dwindled such that, by age 10, only 30% scored at genius level and by adulthood, only 2% score at genius level. As we age, our experiences strengthen particular neural pathways, we develop recurrent thought patterns and beliefs, and lose mental flexibility.
“Long-term success in this era of fast-paced technological change and global economic shifts requires a new way of thinking and operating. In fact, the corporate playbook is being rewritten and replaced by one that takes business agility to a level we have never seen before.”
Lynne Doughtie, Chairman CEO, KPMG
Investigate – Looking for opportunities to improve current services, work processes, or products.
Design – Generating concepts that lead to improvement.
Energize – is the ability to influence others, building coalitions, and mobilizing support for new ideas.
Apply – is showing boldness and risking mistakes; putting an idea into a practical plan, testing and modifying the plan, and making new ideas a regular part of the work process.