“Can you help us become more agile?”
That’s one of the most common questions we hear from business leaders. Sometimes it shows up as a strategic imperative. Sometimes it’s frustration. And sometimes it rises from envy: “Our competitors seem to move faster than we do.”
Every leadership team I work with wants more agility. Yet many of those same organizations are weighed down by layers of process, approvals and controls built over years to minimize risk. None of it is accidental—and none of it is free. Agility demands trade-offs. And few organizations are truly willing to pack light to maximize the opportunities.
So here’s one question we always ask right away: What Are You Willing to Leave Behind?
How We Got Here (and Why It Makes Sense)
Most large organizations, especially public companies, didn’t accidentally become slow. They became safe.
Over years (and often decades), leaders intentionally made organizational choices to reduce risk:
- Clear roles and handoffs
- Layered approvals
- Policies and controls
- Narrow decision rights
- Governance forums for nearly everything
And for good reason. These mechanisms protect the enterprise. They reduce operational, financial, regulatory and reputational risk. Many Fortune 500 organizations are incredibly well-designed—for a world where predictability mattered more than speed.
The problem is that those same mechanisms quietly harden into barriers when the environment changes. What once protected the business now constrains it.
The Myth of “Adding” Agility
One of the biggest misconceptions about agility is that you add it:
- Add agile teams
- Add a new process
- Add a transformation office
- Add new rituals or tools
But agility isn’t additive. It’s subtractive.
To become more agile, much of what’s been built up—carefully, thoughtfully and with the best intentions—has to be re-examined, simplified or torn down.
That’s where the real work starts. And where many efforts stall, because lightening the load is uncomfortable.
What “Lightening the Load” Really Means
The hardest moments we encounter with our clients aren’t about understanding the concept of agility. They’re about confronting trade-offs.
Lightening the load often means:
- Letting go of some centralized control
- Pushing decisions closer to customers, products or the front line
- Accepting that not every decision will be perfect
- Redesigning roles that were built to govern, audit the work and manage complexity rather than create value
- Questioning long-standing policies and processes when no one remembers the original rationale
Agility asks a provocative question: What risks are we willing to live with—and what risks are we trying to eliminate at all costs?
A More Practical Path Forward
This is where many organizations get stuck in false choices: agile or safe. That’s not the real choice. The real work is designing for both.
Here are a few practical ways we see leaders make progress:
1. Be explicit about where agility matters most
Not every part of the organization needs the same level of speed or flexibility. Identify where customer impact, innovation or growth truly depend on agility and focus there.
2. Redefine decision rights, not just processes
Agility stalls when teams are empowered in theory but constrained in practice. Clarify who decides what, at what level and with what guardrails.
3. Replace controls with clarity
Many controls exist because expectations aren’t clear. Clear outcomes, priorities and boundaries often reduce the need for heavy oversight.
4. Design governance for pace, not perfection
Governance doesn’t have to disappear, but it does need to change. Faster decision forums, fewer attendees and clearer escalation paths make a meaningful difference.
5. Treat risk as something to manage, not eliminate
Zero-risk organizations don’t exist: only slow ones. The goal is informed risk, owned by the right leaders, at the right level.
Agility is choosing to travel with a backpack instead of a suitcase
When I travel with a large suitcase, I’m prepared for almost every scenario. Extra shoes. “Just in case” outfits. Lots of options.
But I pay for that preparedness through:
- Slower movement
- More planning
- Less flexibility
- Harder pivots when plans change
I love backpacking over suitcases, but it forces trade-offs. I can’t bring everything. I have to decide what matters most. I need to accept some discomfort and uncertainty in exchange for speed, adaptability and freedom to change direction. Decisions about what goes in to my backpack can’t be reckless: I need to choose my contents through trade-offs based on the best information available.
Organizations work the same way. Adopting agile techniques means making intentional decisions about what matters most.
Over time, many enterprises have packed for every possible scenario—processes, approvals, controls and roles for edge cases. To become more agile, leaders must ask themselves:
What are we willing to leave behind to move faster?
The Leadership Moment
Here’s the hard truth: organizational agility is not a process problem. It’s a leadership challenge.
Agility requires leaders to:
- Let go of some certainty
- Trust the organization they’ve built
- Tolerate short-term messiness in service of long-term performance
Perhaps most importantly, leaders need to acknowledge that the very systems that made the organization successful may now need to be redesigned.
Agility isn’t about moving faster for the sake of speed. It’s about moving when it matters, without being trapped by yesterday’s answers.
So before asking, “How do we become more agile?”, first ask yourself this: What are we willing to leave behind—and what are we not?
