Why 1st Conference is about "Organisational" agility

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A version of this article was originally published on my LinkedIn page.


1st Conference was founded in 2015 with the focus of cutting through the confusion and marketing noise around the adoption of agile. It was always about how organisations “integrate agile practices, principles and ideals into their organisational delivery DNA”.  It has always been about more than just technology

In 2017, Jurgen Appelo and a focus on Management 3.0 helped us reemphasise the power of building great teams of knowledge workers – and take the ways we build great agile teams of people into other areas of business.

In 2018, the focus is on Building Organisational Agility as we continue to grow the theme of integrating agile principles and ideas into organisational DNA.

Why organisational agility?

We can all agree that things around us are moving faster than ever before. Is it really imagine that is has only been 10 years since the smart phone revolution hit? This rate of change is damaging companies - half of the S&P 500 will be replaced in the next 10 years.

Traditional organisational design around silos and task efficiency is being replaced by activities focused on the customer and integrating all the activities required to deliver customer value. It is through this lens that we need to explore that changes we need to make. 

Business and IT is a functional separation is legacy of a bygone era ‘in which IT was considered a cost necessary to improve the efficiencies of the business, not a creator of value for external customers by building products and services’
— Lean Enterprise, Joanne Molesky et al, chapter 6 page 111

The way we work and think in function separations and silos – eg ‘Business’ and ‘IT’ – are no longer sufficient in today's world. We need to think about things which are integrated around delivery of value to the customer. This is why the focus needs to be on Organisation Agility.

Organisational agility is about how your business and your people are able to successfully respond to change and eventually drive change for the market that they are in

It is about how the elements work together, not apart. It's about how your organisation can function and learn to adapt to change. Maybe one day – it’ll also be a High Performance Organizations that can Innovate at Scale.

Come to 1st Conference on 26 and 27 February 2018 hosted by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Learn from international speakers and local experts on how they are build a bridge to organisation agility.