Business Agility Institute
en
Capabilities and behaviors for the next
generation of organizations

Business Agility, as a term, is both inspirational and aspirational. Who doesn’t want a business that can effortlessly respond to the changing world? Yet, it still means vastly different things for different people.

We created the Domains of Business Agility to bring clarity to the overall field that is business agility. To make sense of what it means to have agility in an organization. And to do so in a way that is accessible and usable by as many people as possible.

This is the fourth edition of the Domains of Business Agility. While earlier editions focused on the characteristics of an agile organization, this latest edition approaches business agility in terms of business capabilities and behaviors. We think this approach is more useful as it connects the goals of the organization (new and improved capabilities) with observable and measurable actions (behaviors).

This latest edition is the culmination of over 18 months of research and review. It incorporates the insights from over 1300 organizations as well as input from many of our member organizations. The result is a comprehensive model of universal behaviors and capabilities across organizations of different sizes, types, and industries.

Our focus on behavioral change is an opportunity to have a bigger impact on organizations around the world. Our goal is to enable organizations to better understand their current state and constraints to agility. In other words, to make better decisions where to focus their transformational investment. This behavioral model is also the basis of how we evaluate agility in organizations (businessagilityprofile.com).

The Domains of Business Agility is a guide through your Business Agility journey. For leaders and executives, it is an essential educational tool. For transformational leaders, it brings focus to the right areas. And for folk on the journey towards business agility, it sets context for each step ahead of you.

Explore the Domains of Business Agility in our Library, or read the complete Domains collected in e-book format.

It’s free to download and share.

WHAT IS BUSINESS AGILITY?

The world is changing faster than ever before. Organizations of every size are struggling to remain relevant in the eyes of their customers and society. Customers are more informed and their expectations are higher than they’ve ever been. Employees demand more clarity, empowerment, and meaning in their work. It is only high-performing, adaptable, and agile organizations who will thrive in this unpredictable market – in other words, business agility.

Business agility is a set of organizational capabilities, behaviors, and ways of working that affords your business the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to achieve its purpose. No matter what the future brings.

With this freedom, companies can instinctively seize emerging and unforeseen opportunities for their customers’ benefit and bring focus to how work is conducted across the entire organization. It’s not just processes and procedures. It is principles and ways of thinking that lead to new organizational behaviors and norms.

KEY PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS AGILITY

The Domains of Business Agility are built on 4 key principles that recognize the nuances and complexity in how organizations adopt and practice business agility.

Principles of Business Agility infographic
  1. Continuum. Not a State. Business agility is a continuum, not a state. It’s an ongoing journey where the question is not whether you have it, but rather how much you have (and is it enough).
  2. Range of Excellence. Organizations express a range of business agility capabilities, both strong and emerging, at the same time in different areas of the business.
  3. 1000’s of Ways. Business agility can be established in thousands of different ways, using different approaches, practices, frameworks, and operating models.
  4. Behavioral Change. Business agility can only be expressed (and measured) through behaviors – if you act with agility, you have agility.

THE DOMAINS OF BUSINESS AGILITY

Introducing the Domains of Business Agility: a cultural operating model for your organization consisting of 5 primary domains spanning 18 emergent business capabilities. The combination of these domains and capabilities determines the current and continued effectiveness of your organization and are expressed through behaviors.

The capabilities and behaviors within each domain are equally important, necessary, and interrelated. You cannot realize business success in an unpredictable market until you develop business agility in each domain across all areas in your organization.

Domains of Business Agility Periodic Table - Broad

The purpose of this model is to show you the essential building blocks for agile organizations to strive towards.

Business agility is best seen as a continuous and systematic evolution of culture, people, and skills rather than a transactional event focusing on one or two domains or capabilities. Start thinking of business agility as the common thread. An operating model that amplifies adaptability and responsiveness in every area of your business. One that acknowledges that an organization is a complex adaptive system and that agility must be everyone’s responsibility. That is to say that “an organization is only as agile as its least agile division!“, and that’s probably not IT anymore.

The key capabilities associated with each of the five domains of business agility are illustrated in the following diagram. The model itself consists of 3 main components: Domains, Capabilities, and Behaviors.

Domains of Business Agility infographic

DOMAINS, CAPABILITIES, & BEHAVIORS

DOMAINS

The Domains are the highest grouping and basically answer the question: If you are trying to help an organization realize more Business Agility, what broad areas (or domains) will you focus on improving? Another way of looking at it is what are the desired outcomes of having greater agility?

There are 5 main areas or domains: Responsive Customer-centricity, Engaged Culture, People-first Leadership, Value-based Delivery and Flexible Operations.

Within each of the domains are a series of interconnected capabilities. Some of these capabilities are common sense and have been known in the business world for years (like knowing your customer) and others are more often overlooked or novel (like integrating diverse ideas).

CAPABILITIES

A capability simply refers to the power or ability of an organization to do something. Can your organization seize emergent opportunities? Can your organization act as one? Can your organization fund work dynamically? Can your organization engage transparently and courageously?

Based on the research of the Business Agility Institute, there are 18 capabilities that develop and improve as business agility advances. These have been grouped according to the Domain they contribute to the most.

Capabilities themselves are realized by a set of behaviors. In other words, when people start behaving in specific ways, the organization will realize certain capabilities. There are over 80 different behaviors that help organizations build and realize the 18 capabilities of business agility.

For further detail, the Domains of Business Agility powers the Business Agility Profile. An in-depth evaluation of the 18 organizational capabilities and the 80+ behaviors. Learn more about the Business Agility Profile.

BEHAVIORS

Imagine leaders who incentivize risk-taking, give teams space for innovation, adjust strategy based on direct customer insights, and let purpose drive process. Imagine a workforce aligned and passionate about your organization’s mission. Imagine a place where people are not only safe but encouraged to challenge the status quo and facilitate divergent thinking. Imagine everyone working as one team. Each of these are observable behaviors, not tools, processes, or systems.

A behavior is a specific, observable, and repeated action taken by a person or group inside an organization. In this model, behaviors are the ultimate expression of business agility. In reality, each of the 80+ behaviors belong to multiple capabilities. However, for simplicity we have listed each behavior under the capability they contribute to the most.

Each behavior is expressed by a specific actor; either leaders, executives, or everyone.

  • Executives refers to those leaders in a position of significant responsibility and authority. Usually directly responsible for P&L and the strategic vision.
  • Leaders mean those individuals who carry personal authority and influence across the organization. This often includes people in management positions, although leaders don’t always have to be managers. Leaders also include the Executives above.
  • Everyone incorporates the entire workforce (employees, contractors, managers, etc). Unless otherwise specified, this includes leaders and executives above. These people are part of the culture of the organization.

Overall, capabilities are improved when you improve the underlying behaviors across the organization. While this is not a comprehensive list of organizational behaviors, these are the ones identified to have the largest impact on business agility.

Behaviors serve another important role: evaluation. Since a behavior is an observable and measurable action they are a great indicator for evaluating the overall agility of an organization. Whether these behaviors are observed in executives, senior leaders, or any and all employees of the organization – regardless of their title or rank.

As you go through the Domain of Business Agility, start assessing how effective your capabilities are, simply by reflecting how many observable behaviors exist in your organization.

Observable Business Agility Behaviors

EMERGENT BUSINESS CAPABILITIES

RESPONSIVE CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY

As customers’ needs and expectations shift and evolve, organizations must be responsive enough to stay relevant and resonant. When an organization centers its purpose on something greater than itself — the customer they serve every day — it is not only able to shift with its customers’ needs, it is able to anticipate needs ahead of its customers themselves.

Customer-centricity is the foundation of business agility. Aiming leadership, strategies, systems, processes, and people toward serving your customers’ ever-changing needs — in other words, putting them at the center of your universe — enables business agility to flourish in your organization.

Fiercely Champion The Customer FIERCELY CHAMPION THE CUSTOMER A core capability of business agility is making sure everyone has a clear understanding of who the organization’s primary customer is — and is ready to fiercely champion them.

Sense & Respond Proactively SENSE & RESPOND PROACTIVELY Today, companies need to proactively scan for emerging patterns and sense trends that may add up to significant change — even disruption.

Integrate Diverse Ideas INTEGRATE DIVERSE IDEAS Organizations must aggressively invest in the ability to seek out and openly discuss diverse ideas from anyone in the organization — especially those closest to the customer.

ENGAGED CULTURE

Engaged employees feel connected and committed to the purpose and work of your organization. When engagement grows deep roots, it becomes an integral part of an organization’s culture. It simply becomes part of “how we do things around here.” Active connection and commitment become central to the values, norms, and behaviors of the group.

Such an engaged culture is not simple to develop and sustain. It flourishes when leaders and employees share needed care, offer meaningful feedback, and take effective action to keep it alive. We need to constantly think about culture and how it engages and sustains people. This is how agility blossoms.

Cultivate A “Learning Organization” CULTIVATE A “LEARNING ORGANIZATION” A “Learning Organization” is always in motion. It seeks new insights and knowledge — whether from outside or within — and uses that knowledge to improve itself.

Engage Transparently & Courageously ENGAGE TRANSPARENTLY & COURAGEOUSLY Information provides the context (“the why”) that individuals and teams need to make the best possible decisions they can without having to go up and down the chain and slow down decision-making.

Embed Psychological Safety EMBED PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY In this environment, psychological safety for individuals and teams is paramount. It needs to be woven into the DNA of an organization and modeled by its leaders.

Act As One ACT AS ONE Operating with the mindset of a single aligned team focuses your organization so it can achieve shared goals that span teams, functions, and divisions.

VALUE-BASED DELIVERY

To create value for customers, organizations must deliver the right work, in the right way, at the right time. You need to be able to move at the speed of your customers. And as your customers' needs and expectations evolve, your organization needs to be willing to make hard decisions about where to focus its efforts.

However, focusing efforts appropriately is not enough if the systems that deliver value are ineffective. Organizations need to identify and remove constraints and bottlenecks. When value-delivery systems are optimized, organizations can focus more effectively and consistently delight their customers.

Unleash Workflow Creatively UNLEASH WORKFLOW CREATIVELY Business agility comes from optimizing the workflow from end to end. Because systems will always have constraints, the key is to focus on creatively resolving the most critical roadblocks – wherever they exist.

Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize. PRIORITIZE. PRIORITIZE. PRIORITIZE. Just how many “top priorities” can an organization survive? Leadership needs to ruthlessly prioritize the work of the organization — over and over again.

Deliver Value Sooner DELIVER VALUE SOONER Success is not measured by when a great idea leaves your corner of the organization, but by when it arrives in the customer’s hands.

Seize Emergent Opportunities SEIZE EMERGENT OPPORTUNITIES Truly agile organizations have the ability to perceive, anticipate, and act on transformative events and emerging change.

FLEXIBLE OPERATIONS

Organizations are complex, adaptive systems. The dynamic interactions between each element of an organization adds exponential complexity — and unpredictability. Yet, for some reason, business operations are often run on the assumption that organizations behave in simple and predictable ways. This misalignment has profound and measurable consequences on an organization’s effectiveness.

Organizations need to invest in creating flexible business operations — from strategy and funding models to operational governance and the very structure of the organization itself. Organizations with flexible operations are better positioned to meet evolving needs and seize emergent opportunities.

Adapt Strategies Seamlessly ADAPT STRATEGIES SEAMLESSLY Nowadays, strategic planning must be an ongoing and evolving process that is fast to change in response to dynamic conditions.

Fund Work Dynamically Fund Work Dynamically The ability to respond dynamically to changing circumstances and emergent possibilities by moving organizational funds to where they can make the most impact.

(Re)Organize Structures Fluidly (RE)ORGANIZE STRUCTURES FLUIDLY Teams and people must be able to move where they are needed most without becoming mired in overly complex change management.

Balance Governance And Risk BALANCE GOVERNANCE AND RISK Giving people the greatest possible autonomy to serve customers without putting the organization at excessive risk or causing negative repercussions.

PEOPLE-FIRST LEADERSHIP

The most compelling competitive advantage a company has is its people and the culture they create together. People-first leadership recognizes that the leader’s job is to do what it takes for people to succeed, thrive, and delight the customer. The idea of having leadership “put people first” is not limited to an organization’s employees, however. It also includes cultivating a “people-first” culture in relation to contractors, external partners, collaborators, and alliances.

People-first leadership begins with the intentional development of trust and respect for everyone in the organization. It’s about sharing information, communicating transparently, and distributing power and responsibility. It’s less about what you know as a leader and more about how you create an environment to empower others to do the best work of their lives.

Foster Authentic Relationships FOSTER AUTHENTIC RELATIONSHIPS Authentic relationships are not built by artificial harmony or shallow interactions, but through honest, respectful discussions and debates.

Empower With Accountability EMPOWER WITH ACCOUNTABILITY Empowerment allows individuals to contribute meaningfully through the mindsets of growth and ownership. However, empowerment without accountability is laissez-faire. And accountability without empowerment is just command and control.

Realize People’s Potential REALIZE PEOPLE’S POTENTIAL Realizing potential in people is a partnership: leaders must recognize latent potential, foster environments to support development, and offer opportunities for growth.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, the goal isn't business agility. Rather, the goal is to achieve your purpose — no matter what the future brings.

Keep in mind the purpose of this model. The Domains of Business Agility is a guide through your Business Agility journey as well as an essential educational tool for leaders and executives. Reading this document should paint a picture of what Business Agility could look like in your organization.

Our hope is that this body of work will expand how you see Business Agility. To see it as more than “agile outside IT” or a process to help you deliver faster. Business Agility is an ecosystem of capabilities. All working together to afford your organization the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to achieve your purpose. No matter what the future brings.

As a next step, look at the 18 capabilities and ask yourself, “given our strategy and business context, which of these are most important to my organization?”. You don’t have to change everything all at once. Focus on improving a single capability and the behaviors that enable it.

And remember that behavioral change happens in a multitude of ways. Sometimes it will be through education and learning to cultivate a new mindset and mental model. Sometimes the change will need 1:1 coaching or mentoring. Sometimes you will need to change processes and systems to incentivize a new behavior. Take it step by step. Business Agility is an ongoing journey.

Yet, despite the complexity of the journey, the benefits to business agility are manifest. Organizations can rapidly respond to competitive challenges, global disruption, or new customer demand. And in some cases, the organization can become the challenger and disrupter themselves. Staff satisfaction and retention is higher and, because of the general reduction in management overheads, operating costs are lower. Lastly, with a laser-focus on creating value, organizations are more responsive to their customers or wider purpose.

These domains and their emergent capabilities are the keys to business agility. None of them are more important than another. Rather they are complementary and mutually necessary.

And, just like business agility is a journey, so too are the Domains of Business Agility. We will continue to learn and update this model based on our research and your feedback. So, as use the Domains of Business Agility, please share your learnings as you apply them on your journey.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Domains of Business Agility infographic

To understand how your organization measures against the domains, capabilities, and behaviors, visit businessagilityprofile.com

AUTHORS

  • Ahmed Sidky, Ph.D
  • Evan Leybourn
  • Laura Powers

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This has been a joint effort by numerous Business agility practitioners and experts around the world. We’d like to take the time to thank:

  • Abby Hersey
  • Colleen Kirtland
  • Curtis Michelson
  • Darryl Wright
  • Dawna Jones
  • Elena Abbott
  • Jason Hall
  • Jay Goldstein
  • Jeff Kosciejew
  • John Dobbin
  • Julian Smith
  • Jutta Eckstein
  • Kendall Puccio
  • Kerri Sutey
  • Melanie Kendell
  • Nadezhda Belousova
  • Opeyemi Adeyekun
  • Parvez Yusufji
  • Peter Stanford
  • Robin Bare
  • Russ Lewis
  • Sandra Davey
  • Sandy Mamoli
  • Shane Hastie
  • Shannon Ewan
  • Thomas Walenta
  • Tim Rutherford
  • Xavier P.F. Bronlet

The Domains of Business Agility (v4.0) is licensed by the Business Agility Institute under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.