Operational agility: best managerial practices to implement

To remain competitive and anticipate the changes that are perpetually transforming their environment, companies in all sectors of activity must integrate operational agility at the heart of their management method.

Focus on operational agility, its challenges, benefits, and on the good managerial practices necessary for its implementation.

 

What is operational agility?

Agility refers to the ability of an individual or a company to react quickly, anticipate change and create value, through collective intelligence, collaboration and innovation.

There are several forms of agility in the business world:

• Strategic agility
• Operational agility
• Organizational agility at work
• Agile governance
• Functional agility

Operational agility is the company’s ability to adapt to its environment through the implementation, in the field, of agile, efficient and value-creating project management tools and methods.

 

Why develop your operational agility?

As the health crisis has proved, many hazards, crises and disruptions can occur throughout the life of a company. Strengthening its operational agility is therefore now This is an essential lever for anticipating operational changes and risks and for developing its ability to bounce back and reinvent itself constantly, at the pace of market and environmental developments.

Developing operational agility is also a way to increase productivity and quality, reduce costs and lead times, improve customer satisfaction and, ultimately, overall business performance.

In addition, operational agility can make it possible to respond to CSR challenges such as the quality of life at work. This managerial mode helps to strengthen the motivation and commitment of employees and to reduce turnover and absenteeism.

Finally, operational agility makes it possible to speed up processes (production, manufacturing, delivery), decision-making and optimize flow management.

 

How to develop operational agility? Managerial practices to be put in place

Proximity managers play a key role in strengthening the company’s operational agility. Indeed, the development of such a competence implies Adjust your managerial practices and to develop new ones. The manager will have to:

• Focus on high value-added tasks;
• Encourage collective intelligence within your team;
• Implement immediate, transparent and transversal communication, in particular through the implementation of digital and collaborative tools;
• Adopt agile tools and methods : Scrum, visual management, Kanban, Lean Management, 5 S, Six Sigma method, McKinsey’s 7S, etc.;
• Integrate operational agility into a continuous improvement process, to be constantly adjusted and improved;
• Eliminate sources of loss and focus on value-generating elements;
• Adopt participative management, with the aim of involving all employees in decision-making and promoting innovation, creativity and collaborative work;
• Strengthen employee motivation and commitment;
• Define SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound);
• …

 

The interim manager at the service of operational agility

Gaining operational agility is an ambitious project that is often difficult to implement, measure and sustain. In this respect, interim management is a real springboard. The interim manager, an agile and high-flying leader, has an outside perspective, sector expertise, more than 15 years of career and outstanding human and managerial qualities. He will be able to support your local managers in the deployment of tailor-made managerial practices to implement or strengthen the operational agility of all your teams.