The 5 step thinking model I use with clients to help them move smoothly and quickly, is called Releasing Agility.

In this post, and it is a long one, I’ll explain what Business Agility is, who it belongs to and how to release it within your organisation - and yes, it is always released. 

I will share plenty of resources within this article from across the Cultivated Management site. There is nothing revolutionary about business agility, nor around the way it is released. As such, I will link to articles on strategy, people management and problem solving. 

What is Business Agility?

I’ve been using the term Releasing Business Agility for around 11 years now to represent the journey (and it’s always a journey), leaders and managers can take their organisation on, to get better results and cultivate a workplace that enriches the lives of all who work in it. 

It's not a quick fix, nor does the journey ever end. There are always ways to get smoother and quicker, and better. There will always be problems. It's therefore a journey. As the journey lasts for the life of the business, it's fair to say it should be an enjoyable journey too.

The overall model I use is very simple but don't let that mask the power that sits beneath it.

In a nutshell, Releasing Agility is about ensuring there is a bright future for the business, and then the on-going journey of removing obstacles and blockers that stand between where you are now - and this bright future.

It's not just about business results either, it's also about creating a company that’s good to work in.

There’s little point in getting your business results if you lose all of your good people along the way. Equally, it’s nice to work in a nice company but not if the results are coming in. 

As such, throughout all of my work - and the model - is the need to balance these two core aspects:

  1. Moving towards an ambitious future and achieving business goals along the way
  2. Ensuring you cultivate a company that is a joy to work in, and enriches the lives of all who work there.

Agility:

Agility means to move smoothly and quickly towards your business goals.

It’s helps then to have a clear direction of travel and some goals - we’ll come on to this in a bit.

Release:

Release means to set free from confinement.

It’s my strong conviction that every business was, at some point, moving quickly towards a future with good business results (and was good to work in).

Then, red-tape, rules, politics and a whole host of other things crept in which slowed things down. 

Therefore, to move smoothly and quickly towards your goals and bright future (agility), you need to work out what's stopping you and solve that problem (release).

The Model

The Releasing Agility model is therefore not a framework, nor is it an off-the-shelf implementation, nor will it tell you what to do in much depth.

That would be arrogant of me to:

a) know your current dreams, ambitions and goals

b) propose solutions to un-examined problems

c) insult the intelligence of those working in your organisation

It therefore wouldn't work - like most off-the-shelf solutions.

Instead, it is a "thinking" model designed to encourage study, observation, insights, creativity, problem solving and thinking - all of which must have your context, goals, culture, personality and people stamped all over it.

The Releasing Agility model

The thinking model is not prescriptive - instead it encourages leaders and managers to study, think and observe. Then put in place the appropriate resolution for the contextual problems you face. 

It provides a lens, kind of like a checklist, of the 5 main areas to study. We'll jump into how to Release Business Agility in a minute.

Business Agility belongs to managers and leaders

If the problems (red-tape, politics, lack of clarity, no clear goals etc) are slowing the business down, then it’s highly likely that 99% of these problems were created by well meaning leaders and managers.

After all, most problems that are slowing growth and delivery are systemic problems.

It’s therefore essential that they own the solutions - and identify the levers they can pull to release huge amounts of speed, agility and motion. 

Most problems are caused by ineffective communication resulting in a lack of clarity and alignment.

You'll see these over-arching categories of clarity and alignment on the diagram too - along with right action.

After all, busy work that is mis-aligned due to a lack of clarity seems to be how many people spend their entire days at work.

Busy work is not the point - the right kind of work is - that which adds value and leads to a bright future and strong results; this requires clarity and alignment.

The 5 Thinking Steps

The model is is made up of 5 parts - each encouraging Leaders and Managers to think, observe and study.

I often call this a communication model as many of the problems identified stem from ineffective communication:

  • Lack of strategy
  • Poorly communicated strategy
  • Facts presented when a story is needed
  • Not leaning into current problems
  • Lack of cooperation across functions
  • No data or insights
  • Not dealing with poor performance
  • No focus on studying process failures - and bringing people together to solve them

Step 1 – Painted a Picture of the Future (with goals)

This is about clarity over the direction of travel. What are the ambitions of the business Leaders and what does the business need to look and feel like in the future?

This step is about ensuring there is clarity - and it's emotionally compelling.

Facts and data won't cut it here. It should be a bright future that people want to achieve; something compelling, interesting, emotionally engaging and bright.

This is NOT a strategy. In fact, this step is the first part of building a strategy.

It's fair to say there should also be goals here too - around the bright future. Not goals about products, services or deliverable - but goals around building and creating an ambitious company in the future.

Here is an article on this step, along with a podcast - How to paint a picture of the future.

Storytelling is essential here too - here's an article on business story telling.

If you need some help with this in your business, then I offer a Story Telling workshop and the Communication Skills workshop too as part of my services.

When using the model, we're really using it to ask questions about how clear you, and your teams, are about the direction you're moving in.

This stage is about thinking, studying and observing:

  • What direction is the company heading in?
  • Is there a clear, ambitious story about the future?
  • Why are we doing what we are doing?
  • Does everyone in your team know what this bright future looks like?
  • Are people aligned and energised to be working on this amazing bright future?

Step 2 – What obstacles are stopping you achieving this future state?

This is about identifying obstacles and problems that stand in your way.

In a sense, this is about understanding, honestly, the current reality of the business.

A good question to ask is:

"If this bright future is so compelling and interesting, what's stopping us from achieving it tomorrow?"

The answers to these questions, with some digging, analysis and critical thinking, essentially become a list of obstacles and problems to tackle.

This is not an easy step.

The reason it's not easy is because we're asking Leaders and Managers to lean into the current reality and it may not be pleasant. In fact, in most organisations it can be quite messy and unsettling.

But that's not the really hard part. The really hard part is for Leaders and Managers to come to terms with the fact that they created many of these problems in the first place.

  • If this bright future is so amazing, why are you not already there?
  • What obstacles and problems do you need to work through?

This step requires studying real problems; not myths, rumours, opinions and conjecture. It requires being honest and it require humility.

It's also important to keep your focus on the painted picture and your goals.

There are ALWAYS more problems in a business than you could ever realistically solve. Many people spend lots of their day dealing with problems that don't need to be solved. The intentions are sound but without a clear direction, we can never be sure the problem is worth overcoming.

You only want to be taking on the problems that are stopping you from achieving this bright future - and the goals you have around this.

Identify the problems, study them, articulate them and define them - and you're already half-way to solving them.

You then need a plan on how you will tackle these problems. A plan has names, dates, paths of attack, reporting standards and expected results.

Once you have a painted picture, your current reality and a plan - you have a strategy.

Step 3 – Build the team to get it done

No bright future can be attained in business by just the Leaders and Managers; it needs everyone in the business to align and come together.

It needs the engine of a business success; it's people.

Like any good story there is a problem to overcome - a giant, seemingly monumental problem or challenge to take on.

A willing leader decides (and decide is the right word here) to take it on. They surround themselves with a variety of people, with different skills, in order to tackle the problem.

In any good story there are relationships, failures, success, morales, growth and, in many stories, a finale in which the challenge is solved. This is a classic heroes journey.

What's often misunderstood though, is how each of the people in the story grows.

They overcome fears, develop stronger characters, learn skills, push past comfort zones and come together to cooperate.

But before then, you need to know you have the team to get it done.

As a leader or manager you should, with honesty, be able to put your hand on your heart, look around your teams, and say, "this is the team to get it done".

If you can't do this (and don't worry, most managers can't), then you need a people plan.

Your people need a plan – this is where strong HR initiatives and competent management is crucial. Remember, HR are not evil.

It has to be the team to get it done - maybe not right now, but you've got to have a plan.

If it isn't the team to get it done - how will it ever get done?

Here's a deep dive article and podcast on this step of the model.

Step 4 – Define the habits and routines for success

The everyday habits and routines will either lead to success, or they won't.

By optimising, improving and creating positive processes and routines, you stop people having to think about how to do basic stuff.

This sounds wrong, as though you're taking away any thinking, but that's not true.

You're freeing up mental space to work on solving problems, adding value, doing complex work, working with others and growing in their careers.

Instead of having 6 ways to get work out of the door, or follow a policy within the business, you have 1.

By having the discipline to follow that 1 process, and ensuring continuous optimisation is happening, you will learn what works and what doesn't.

Ditch processes and routines that don't work. Start new ones. Spend time mapping how work flows - and work on making that process better.

When something works - double down on it. When something doesn't work - fix it.

Don't stifle the business with process. Have just enough to get the basics out of the way - then free up the minds of your people to bring themselves, their strengths and imagination, and their energy and attention onto the work and problems you've got to get done.

Here's an in-depth article and podcast on this part of the model.

Step 5 – Iterate, learn and improve

You will not have all of the answers. If you think you do, then you are doomed to fail.

Problems and issues will pop up on this journey, problems and issues you may never have contemplated.

The economy will change, world events will scupper your best laid plans and you will not know everything needed to optimise and overcome every problem.

Therefore it's essential to learn.

Everyone in the organisation is taking on a big challenge and striving towards an ambitious future. Don't expect everyone to be experts in everything, but do expect everyone to learn.

A learning culture starts with Leaders being humble and accepting they don't know everything, demonstrating learning to others, acknowledging mistakes and encouraging others to grow.

Mistakes are also a rich source of learning too - and plenty will happen on any journey like this.

Learning is essential - bake it in to everything - and ensure everyone is carving out space to learn.

How to measure agility

I often get asked how to measure agility. People point me to maturity models and spider diagrams of agile “things” and ask if this is how.

After I stop laughing at these things, I offer the following measures of Business Agility.

Business results, goals and delivery

The first and foremost measure(s) of success are that you are getting better business results. As mentioned previously, Releasing Business Agility is a never-ending fun journey. It's not a point that you arrive at and say "we're agile"!

No, it's a way of merely focusing energy and attention on ensuring all five steps in the model are being understood, studied and addressed. All five steps are designed with the two core goals in mind; better results and cultivating an enriching workplace.

Everything done is in service of these two things - so focus on these two things are a primary measure of success.

What these will be will be somewhat contextual to your work but the chances are there will be plenty of similar measures across many businesses.

Measure costs, revenue, customer acquisition, scale, market share, margin, life-time value of customers, staff retention, cost to acquire, costs to hire - business results that make sense to your company and domain.

Whatever business results matter to you - aligned to your goals, strategy and problems, should be measured. And they should be trending in the right direction. Trends are important as they show you how stable your work and delivery is. One off numbers may need looking at, but rarely tell the whole story.

Measure customer satisfaction, number of support calls, customer churn. Measure your ability to serve the customers.

I’m amazed at how few managers really know what they’re expected to deliver. How could you ever get smoother and faster if you're not sure what that's towards?

Don't forget people. Use the dreaded Employee Engagement if you must, but be careful. Team level surveys are better - geared around involvement, morale, use of skills around the work itself - and the change you are seeking.

Capture learning outcomes as behaviours not numbers.

It doesn't matter how many people go through training in your Learning Management System, if behaviours don't change in the business.

Use HR data to understand how long people stay at your company. Measure recruitment costs and time to hire.

Measure business results (whatever they are that is relevant to your company, team or department) and measure something around employee involvement and wellbeing.

Don't forget though, most measures in business are ratios - profit v loss, acquisition v value etc. Consider what you wish to compare against something else.

People are not numbers, so be cautious about boiling skills and abilities down to a number.

Most measures should be quantitative but don't ignore qualitative.

Most measures should be trends - they are most helpful.

All measures should help you make the business better, or help you make a decision. If they don't help you do that, then why measure? All you're doing is adding cost, complexity and more data into the mix. That's waste...

Always try to measure work quant numbers against people qual data.

Velocity

A classic agile measure but very useful - how fast are we delivering work, basically.

Throughput

How much work are we actually putting out - and how much is going through our system of delivery?

This measure is helpful whether you're shipping code or marketing campaigns. It tells you how much work your team can do. Powerful. Especially as you'll want to leave some room for creativity and innovation too.

Work in Process

How much work is currently being worked on, or is at least in the delivery mix? Always too much.

Multi tasking is not good when we’re trying to achieve flow and focus. Smooth, consistent, sustainable flow beats jamming people's calendars and minds full of too much work.

You'll know there's too much work in play when people work evenings and weekends - and that's not good. You'll likely see peaks and troughs of delivery, as people put in the hours, then take time off sick if it's really overwhelming.

It's much better, unless there's a compelling and tough deadline, to even out the work and give people their personal lives back. I'm still amazed at how many leaders don't understand that people want a life too.

You'd be surprised at how much more can get done when you work on limiting how much work is in process/progress at any one time. Flow beats full-capacity all day long - and it's much more enjoyable to work like this too.

Cycle Time

Cycle time is nothing more than a measure of time between two points. Typically it's the measure between when work is started to when it is delivered.

You can chunk that down even further - and even measure cycle times at different stages of a process too.

Let's bring this to life with my own work of writing a new book.

I could measure the cycle time from when I start writing the book to when it is shipped to customers. Or from when I start writing until the draft is done.

I could even chunk down further and measure the cycle time of each chapter - helping me to understand how long it takes, on average, to write a chapter.

I don't do this because I don't need the data. I'm quite happy with my work.

But you will need this if you're looking to optimise systems of work.

Cycle time tells you how healthy the delivery model is. What causes large cycle times? Why does some work take longer than others?

Don't obsess over it - use it to inform where to study. Use it to understand how work flows (or doesn't).

Don't set targets around it. Don’t pitch teams against each other. It is what it is, but as you make the workplace better you will likely see cycle times come down - as work flows from idea to value smoothly and quickly.

Cycle time is the health of the system. How smoothly, quickly and consistently does it take for work to move through from idea to delivery?

Failure Demand

Failure demand is the measure of how much work is being done that we didn't get right, or even do at all, in the first place.

This is an intriguing measure created by John Seddon. It is a powerful measure.

You'd be amazed at how much work (and time) people spend in business clearing up mistakes, mess and rework.

In one team, 64% of the work they were doing was failure demand created by another team earlier in the process.

As an obvious example, when bad work is shipped and customers call in to complain (or leave), that is failure demand.

The trick is working out how frequent is it, and how impactful.

Frequent failure demand that is high impact should be dealt with. How do you find out what caused it? Studying, observing and thinking.

It's not always easy to fix though as the failure demand is often caused somewhere else in the organisation, and politics can play a large part in making it hard to solve.

Gather data, insights and evidence, and you stand a good chance of Releasing Agility as you start to turn OFF failure demand. When you do turn it off, you leave more space for value demand for the customers - and make people's lives better in the business (nobody likes to deal with angry customers or someone else's failures and mistakes).

Change the norm

To release business agility requires leaders and managers to think differently - especially with regard to two persistent norms.

Don't pass the burden

One the major reasons for agility not being released is a persistent problem that runs rife in many organisation - passing the burden.

In other words, instead of owning problems and solving them, leaders and managers pass the burden to other people.

When leaders and managers do this, it won't be long before everyone does.

Often times, the burden is passed to people who cannot realistically solve the problems anyway.

  • That problem employee that is moved from manager to manager, or passed over the HR to deal with during the annual review.
  • That gnarly organisational problem that is passed to expensive consulting companies, who make it worse.
  • That tricky technical problem that is passed between departments because it's too hard to solve.
  • The delivery mistake that is passed around to avoid blame.

We've covered already that agility is released by overcoming problems, so it's crucial not to pass the burden of these to others.

Own it. Work with others, create relationships, deal with politics, but don't pass the burden.

This is why agility belongs to managers and leaders; the problems that are preventing companies reaching their goals are typically systemic in nature - and the system of work is best worked on by those who own it - managers and leaders.

When they pass the burden - they pass it to people who have fewer levers to pull.

It's better than for Leaders and Managers to own the problems - and gather talented people around them to solve them.

Don't push

Another challenge many Leaders and Managers face is the natural inclination to push for more.

Instead of studying and understanding problems - and then resolving them, they instead push.

They push people to work harder. They cut budgets and expect people to do more with less. They push for more people. They push for more budget. They push for more more more. They try to "enforce" agile.

The obvious reality is that more of the same will get you more of the same.

Instead, it's worth considering that when you push against a broken or failing system of work, it will push back harder. You'll get weird dysfunction, low morale, more problems, more symptoms of the problems and spiralling costs popping up all over.

It's not about pushing, it's about working out what's preventing you or stopping you - and then dealing with that. It's rarely about pushing, it's about removing the blockers.

That's really all Releasing Agility is - it's about knowing which direction you are travelling in and galvanising people around the work, the vision and the future.

It's about working out what's stopping you and instead of pushing for more - and the system pushing back - identifying the obstacles and working out how to solve it, go around it, move it aside, whatever.

It's about looking after people - because they are the engine of success - and always making sure they are working towards something bigger than any one of us - that compelling emotional painted picture. And of course, ensuring its the team to get it done.

It's about looking at the routines and processes and habits - and asking "are they serving us well?" - and if not, fixing them.

And finally, it's about learning how to be better - as a business and as individuals.

Remember, all good stories involve people changing for the better (or worse 😄).

If we're not changing as we go through this journey (for the better), then we're likely not tackling anything meaningful.

And always remember that people make the business results happen - so what's in it for them? Personal growth is a good start. Being respected by the leadership team is pretty good too. Doing something meaningful for society is ace. But so too is knowing that you're valued - and that what you do is connected to the mission of the business.

Oh yes, and of course, knowing that all the crap that makes it hard for you to do a good job is being fixed, removed and addressed - that's releasing agility.

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