By now, most business leaders are familiar with agile innovation teams. These small, entrepreneurial groups are designed to stay close to customers and adapt quickly to changing conditions. When implemented correctly, they almost always result in higher team productivity and morale, faster time to market, better quality, and lower risk than traditional approaches can achieve.
We believe agile efforts can be scaled up effectively and that doing so can substantially improve outcomes. But leaders must be realistic. Not every function needs to be organized into agile teams and once you begin launching dozens or hundreds of agile teams, you cannot leave the other parts of the business alone. If new agile units are constantly frustrated by bureaucratic procedures or by lack of collaboration between operations and innovation teams, sparks will fly from the organizational friction, leading to poor results.
Read the article for insights on how we get agile rolling and scaled effectively and how to avoid organizational friction and poor results.
