Most of us know that the Cheetah is the fastest land animal but what makes it a successful predator is not just its speed but its agility. Its ability to change direction while travelling at speed. Its ability to remain locked onto its objective (a fast-moving gazelle in this instance) as it weaves this way and that; at speed and in unpredictable ways. Our Cheetah has the energy, the structure, the coordination, the insights, the flexibility and the desire needed - just like a successful business must have.

The world in which we live and work has always been Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) and at Opsis Consulting we believe we all have three choices:

• We make it happen (become more agile and catch those antelope)
• We watch it happen (watch others catch the antelope)
• We wonder what happened (die of starvation)

We’re guessing that most readers of this piece aim to be in that first group – making it happen!

Like the Cheetah, we need to stay focused; locked-on to our ‘goal’. We need to be constantly adjusting our speed, our direction, our actions and be trying to predict what is going to happen next. We must move fast but with agility. We must also engage every-brain-in-the-game. Opsis Consulting can help you do this.

So, just how agile is your business?”

The following are common to truly agile businesses:

• A culture of welcoming and embracing change
• Meaningful and regular (every 1 to 4 weeks) customer involvement and engagement in incremental and iterative development work
• Autonomous team that are empowered to make decisions and take actions
• An internal culture that encourages risk-taking and innovation
• Self-motivating, self-managing teams of broadly-skilled members
• An absence of silo-thinking
• An absence of ‘top-down’ / ‘command-and-control’ management and leadership

Imagining that a perfect score for each of the above is a 10 out of 10. How well would your business score? How far away from the perfect 10 are you? Do you know what to do to bridge that gap between where you are now, and where you’d like to be and need to be?

Becoming more agile as a business is about doing all of these things well. Start small and build your ‘agile culture’ through successful team and project engagement. Their results will encourage and embolden others. Don’t impose it from ‘the top’.

Helping businesses become more agile and more effective is what we do. Let us help make it happen.