27 Aug Agility isn’t a project, it’s a practice

Posted at 08:07h in Management by

If agility is the ability to adapt repeatedly, not just once, then your management practices and change capability are either your greatest enablers, or your biggest blockers.

“The ability of agile firms to execute and change their most basic management practices allows these firms to change capabilities and support execution of the routines of agility.” Chris Worley, The Agility Factor

Agility is not an inspirational poster or a once-off transformation project. It’s a muscle, one that requires practice, strength, and endurance. And that muscle doesn’t develop in a two-day workshop or a crisis-induced scramble. It grows through everyday management practices and a deeply embedded internal change capability.

Yet, here’s what we see too often:

  • Change management is pushed to a small team, mostly HR, a few project managers, or a “change office.”
  • Line managers and employees are left to catch up, adapt on their own, or worse, resist what they don’t understand.
  • The organisation treats change as an event, not a capability.

Sound familiar? Let’s break down why this approach is risky and what to do instead.

1. Management practices: the hidden lever of agility

Worley places management practices at the foundation of his ‘Agility Pyramid’ and his insight reminds us that agile firms don’t cling to outdated routines; they adapt their management practices, the way they communicate purpose, set goals, measure performance, allocate resources, and lead teams.

The question is: Are your management practices helping or hindering adaptability? Some hallmarks of agile management practices include:

  • Continuous planning, not annual cycles carved in stone.
  • Empowered decision-making, so teams can respond quickly without waiting for layers of approval.
  • Transparent communication about why change is needed and how it connects to purpose.
  • Learning opportunities, where feedback from customers and employees actually changes what you do next.

These practices keep organisations from treating agility as an initiative and instead make it a routine—a normal part of work.

2. Building internal change capability: everyone plays a role

Here’s a reality check: If only a few people in your organization “do change,” you’re already behind.

True agility requires shared capability across the system:

  • Leaders and managers who can explain change, model adaptability, and handle resistance with empathy and clarity.
  • Line managers who understand how to implement and lead change at the ground level.
  • Employees who are curious, resilient, and skilled at learning in the flow of work.

Without this, your organisation will always outsource resilience—depending on a handful of specialists while everyone else waits for instructions. That’s a fragile strategy in a world where change is constant.

The cost of ignoring this

If organisations continue to treat adaptability as an HR responsibility or a project add-on, they risk:

  • Slow execution, because people hesitate, misunderstand, or resist.
  • Burnout among change managers, who are often not included in the decisions until it is time for execution and can’t carry the load alone.
  • Strategic irrelevance, as more agile competitors adapt faster.
  • Supervisory and middle-management disengagement, as the people-managers are increasingly excluded from change programs.

In contrast, organisations that embed adaptable management practices and build enterprise-wide change capability don’t just survive turbulence—they leverage it for advantage.

A Closing Thought

Agility isn’t about moving faster for the sake of speed. It’s about creating a system that learns, pivots, and performs repeatedly. That requires rethinking how you manage and who owns change.

In an agile organisation, everyone owns change.

Management practices and change capability should not be afterthoughts, but sadly they often are!

What are your thoughts?

Written by: Liezel van Arkel

Print page