As the Fourth Industrial Revolution barrels forward and the pace of
disruption accelerates, all organizations must operate with agility.
But this urgent priority, now widely-accepted by senior leaders,
presents a major challenge: In business, government, and warfare,
agility is a buzzword. There is no common understanding of what it
means, or of what it takes to be consistently agile.
In this groundbreaking book, Leo Tilman and Charles Jacoby offer the
first comprehensive assessment of the fundamental nature of
organizational agility and then describe the essential leadership
practices for achieving it. They show that agility is far superior to
mere speed or adaptability. Pinpointing its distinctive features, they
define agility as the ability to detect and assess changes in the
competitive environment in real time and then take decisive action. They
demonstrate that agility enables an organization to outmaneuver
competitors by seizing opportunities; better defending against threats;
and acting as a well-orchestrated collective of teams that are empowered
to take disciplined initiative.
Combining their personal experience of building and leading agile
organizations, Tilman in the realm of business and finance and Jacoby in
battlefield command and homeland security, they present a powerful
approach to fostering agility up and down an organization, and out to
its very edges. They show how to detect opportunities and threats by
fighting for risk intelligence; how to pierce through complexity and
unleash creativity by nurturing a culture of honesty and trust; how to
meld top-down vision and planning with decentralized execution; and how
to enhance strategy by recognizing organizations as dynamic portfolios
of risk.
In a world where leaders and their teams must brave the unknown and step
confidently forward - or risk extinction - Agility provides a vital
roadmap for seizing the unprecedented possibilities of the new age and
dominating change instead of being dominated by it.