trends and market dynamics. And when the time
comes, they need to be able to blend strategy, goals
and reality to make the right decision quickly.
The ability to adjust on a day-to-day basis to new
market challenges while keeping an organization’s
strategic goals in mind is crucial, says Ms. Walker.
“When challenges emerge, you have to ask yourself,
‘What’s the problem, and how can I solve it while
still meeting my own performance measures and
strategic goals?’”
Finally, she notes that assessing and calibrat-
ing strategic goals quarterly or annually isn’t fre-
quent enough in the current business environment.
Organizations must have the ability make changes
whenever challenges emerge. That requires every-
one in the organization, particularly at the top, to
acknowledge that hewing to the status quo in a
dynamic environment won’t work.
When they do, they’ll see the benefits where they
matter most—on the bottom line. The Pulse study
found that increased organizational agility resulted
in faster responses to changing market conditions,
better organizational efficiency, improved customer
satisfaction and greater business results. At a time
when many organizations are treading water, those
are powerful reasons to start thinking—and acting—differently. PM
project approaches, the organization is growing its
overall agility: It can get products to market faster
and adjust them on the fly, avoiding long, costly
development cycles. In a dynamic market, this can
make the difference between beating a competitor
and being left behind.
But the road to agility can be bumpy. “Many managers don’t want to deal with agility because [they
think] it is less governable and implies more freedom,
and thus risk, for their teams,” Mr. Torres says. Only
by trusting team members to deliver using essential
checks and balances can project and program managers make their organizations more agile, he says.
But the onus is also on project managers to create
an environment that fosters the ability to quickly
make changes while taking the big picture into
account. To implement organizational agility, “the
number one most important thing is communica-
tion,” says Becky Walker, PMP, government analyst
at the Florida Department of Revenue, Tampa,
Florida, USA. “In order for us to be our most effi-
cient, we have to be aligned with the organizational
strategy and have the resources to quickly respond
to external changes.”
That means project managers have to work hard
to build their knowledge—both of their own orga-
nization’s goals and capabilities, and also of industry
“In order for
us to be our
most efficient,
we have to be
aligned with the
organizational
strategy and
have the
resources to
quickly respond
to external
changes.”
—Becky Walker, PMP, Florida
Department of Revenue, Tampa,
Florida, USA
