The Agile Transformation Breakfast Forum was a simply brilliant morning.
Kindly hosted in the stunning Ordnance Survey offices, 25 HR leaders gathered to experience the thought leadership of Mark Buchan.
Agile is a word that is increasingly talked about in the context of change management, however, change management and business transformation are often referred to in the physical or digital context.
What emerged from the session yesterday was the notion that agile transformations start with people and mindsets.
My key three learnings from the Agile Transformation session are:
- Agile transformations should benefit the business. Focusing on management and senior leadership teams, they have to repurpose the organisation and the CEO’s sponsorship of this is key to it being effective.
- Agile is all about mindset and this is best achieved through coaching behaviours. While there are many qualified coaches operating in the HR space, ‘agile coaching’ is relatively new and needs to be adopted more widely to see a genuine impact from agile transformations.
- There is an expectation that we can predict the future – we simply can’t! What we do have to do is plan to plan. Anticipate our options, look at several varieties and be prepared to change our course and direction as needed.
It is imperative that when we attend a session such as the one led by Mark, we can reflect and understand what we might do differently to really embed the learning.
Such thoughts shared yesterday include:
- Agile ‘doing’ versus agile ‘being’
- Changing how we change
- ‘Power over’ needs to change to ‘power to’ our people
- Utilise Leadership 360 to assess an organisations readiness to change
While economically we face increasing competition, economic uncertainty as long as the Brexit question remains and ever-changing generational employee expectations; one certainty remains: we have to continue to evolve and change to ensure our business proposition is fit for purpose.
Agile is not going to go away, we should be embracing and understanding this concept better to ensure we are ready for the future workplace.
About the author
Jennifer Gaster is the Founder and Director of HR Heads, an HR recruitment agency that specialises in placing senior HR professionals in leadership positions across London, Hampshire, Dorset, Berkshire, Surrey, and the Thames Valley.
Jennifer developed her expertise in recruitment following completion of her academic career, where she achieved a BA (Hons) in Business & Criminology at UCE Birmingham followed by a post-graduate MPhil in Criminology at Cambridge University.
She then took the decision to join a FTSE 250 recruitment business, rising through the ranks to become an Associate Director. With the experience she gained Jennifer set up HR Heads, taking the brand to market in May 2008.
Since then the business has achieved significant year-on-year growth, expanding in 2012 to incorporate sister brand Procurement Heads and employing six further members of staff.
Click here to connect with Jen on LinkedIn.
