Agility and energy for success
Very popular in recent years, agility seems to be the go-to solution for successfully transforming a business and meeting our clients’ needs in 2016. But a business’s agility is closely tied to the agility of its leaders. Just as a healthy body helps us manage stress and maintain positive energy, a business’s agility enables it to better navigate market changes, competition, technological evolution, and more.
Here are some tips to help you become an expert in professional agility:
1 – Take care of your positive energy
Taking care of your body:
Exercise, sleep well, watch your diet… Simple! Just listen to yourself, your body will let you know what it needs. (Let’s be honest, beyond the guilty pleasure, who feels energized after eating fast food?)
Taking care of your mind:
I meditate for about twenty minutes every morning, and I strongly recommend you do the same, even if it’s just five minutes. If you struggle to start, several apps can help, such as Headspace, Zenfriend, Zenfie, or Petit Bambou. Another technique: write down your negative emotions and… throw them away (they deserve it).
Taking care of your relationships:
Some relationships can be complex or even purely asymmetrical. Focus instead on those that bring vitality and optimism. Get help! It’s amazing how much a personal trainer, dietitian, coach, or therapist can boost your positivity.
2 – Bounce back and strengthen your success story
Dwelling on failures and complaining regularly is pointless (or limit it to 10 minutes per week—we have our French reputation to maintain!). But sharing successes with your partner, family, or colleagues re-energizes you every time. In my team, we take ten minutes each week for everyone to share a recent success, energy guaranteed!
Nelson Mandela said: “Either I learn or I win.” According to Gestalt psychology, we learn from every situation, even the most difficult. To do this, we must accept both our failures and our successes, and learn to forgive ourselves and others to close chapters and move forward. Unresolved events continue to pollute our present. Closing doesn’t mean forgetting, we always learn, but forgiveness allows us to move forward quickly and focus on what matters: you, not the mean kid who teased you in eighth grade.
Interestingly, men still have room for improvement. In March 2010, Accenture published the study Women Leaders and Resilience, surveying over 500 senior executives across 20 countries. It showed that resilience, the ability to face challenges and turn them into opportunities, was more present in women than in men.
Steve Jobs, like most great leaders, was highly resilient: he bounced back quickly after the failure of the Apple Lisa and his firing from the company he founded, NeXT. That company was later acquired by… Apple, which reinstated Jobs. Great projects aren’t built in a day—they often follow multiple painful failures, from which lessons are learned. This requires acknowledging responsibility and not dwelling too much on the hardships of fate.
3 – Develop your agility
Planning everything in advance in a rapidly changing world, with formidable new competitors appearing regularly, is often unrealistic and yields poor results (except for the headache and feeling of helplessness).
The idea behind the agile method is to achieve your vision through very short-term goals (one to two weeks) and quickly move to the next step, learning from each iteration with your client.
As a reminder, the principles of agility, derived from the SCRUM method in IT, prioritize:
Interactions between individuals over processes and tools
Functional deliverables, visible quickly over exhaustive documentation
Collaborative client relationships over contractual ones
Flexibility and acceptance of change over rigid planning
Note that this doesn’t devalue the other elements, they’re just considered less critical in this approach. To develop our agility, we can strengthen emotional intelligence, open or reopen our listening to key stakeholders (internal and external clients, talents), develop labs, integrate genuinely different people into our networks, include more women in our teams, and increase diversity overall!