Johannesburg, 12 Dec 2019
Leading international organisations are moving to agile models to weather the exponential changes taking place, but South Africa is still some way behind the global curve. This is according to Chad Williams, enterprise agility expert and consultant, and Be Agile partner, who will present at the upcoming Business Agility Institute conference in Johannesburg – the first such event to be staged in Africa.
“Despite our government’s efforts to embrace the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) to address slow economic growth and youth unemployment, we may not have the right level of truly visionary thinkers in place to drive these strategies,” he says. “These are times of exponential disruption, and this demands more than evolutionary change – it requires a revolutionary mindset to make organisations responsive and anti-fragile.”
Williams cites Elon Musk, who said: "Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors."
“A vector has two qualities – magnitude (strength) and direction. If they are not all aligned to a common direction, they will either stay in one place or head off into different, random directions. Aligning these vectors starts with leadership that enables strategic direction and coherence,” Williams says.
“The old leadership style was a strong ‘command and control’ authoritative one. This worked decades ago, but now leaders must provide clarity and vision; they must trust young knowledge workers to make decisions based on what they are experiencing at the coalface and make decisions at that level.
"They must embrace the benefits of new technologies, and must enable an environment in which people try, fail and rise again. This helps organisations become ‘anti-fragile’, stronger and able to rise and respond to change.”
Williams will address the Business Agility Institute conference on challenges facing traditional enterprises, with success stories around the transformation of major multinationals into agile enterprises using the Scaled Agile Framework for Lean Enterprises (SAFe). The conference will deliver provocative insights and engaging sessions to help South African organisations get to grips with the approaches needed to become high-performing, adaptable and agile, change the way they deliver value and enable the next generation of workers in the 4IR.
The Business Agility Institute conference hosted by Business Agility South Africa will be staged in Johannesburg in February 2020, to help enterprise and government leaders understand the culture, business models and leadership approaches necessary to become agile and resilient. The two-day conference will feature seasoned business agility experts presenting insightful short ‘lightning’ talks and panel discussions on key topics ranging from agility, leadership, improving sales and digital transformation, through to what to expect from the new world of work.
Among the speakers will be renowned futurist Graeme Codrington – global speaker and author of Leading in a Changing World: Lessons for Future Focused Leaders; Evan Leybourn – Founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute; and Jon Foster Pedley – Dean and Director of Henley Business School.
For more information and to reserve your seat, please go to: https://businessagility.institute/attend/business-agility-africa-03-04-february-2020-south-africa/
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