IT teams have spent decades adjusting to the rapid evolution of hardware and software. Here’s how to benefit from that experience.
Digital technology allows disruptive business models to emerge and expand at previously unimaginable rates. For incumbents, this unlocks a Pandora’s box of uncertainties, with no sector unaffected. Most business leaders know this. But what those disruptions actually look like and which ones businesses should take seriously—that’s a tougher nut to crack. After all, the upheaval of the media, travel, and retailing sectors looks somewhat obvious in hindsight, but it was difficult to predict in advance. And seeing around corners only becomes harder as the pace of change accelerates. That’s why agility—the ability to react quickly to threats and opportunities—is an increasingly critical capability as companies seek to become digital to the core.
How can companies become more agile? Take a look at your information-technology team. Agility has long been essential to creating usable software quickly, and chief information officers have developed a suite of agile approaches and tools to address long delivery cycles and inflexible legacy systems. Many of these approaches can be expanded well beyond the perimeters of IT and applied across an organization:
- Increase decision velocity.
- Democratize the data.
- Design assets for reuse.
- Minimize complexity.
- Rapidly redeploy resources.
Agility may require short-term investments, including those to improve management information systems. Yet, as IT’s agile approach has shown, operating in today’s increasingly uncertain world requires companies to both think and act with much greater flexibility.
by Paul Willmott, director in McKinsey’s London office.
More: McKinsey Quarterly