Strategic Agility and the Art of Paying Attention

he many people who’ve been through one of The Australian Strategic Planning Institute’s workshops over the past six years, will know how much emphasis is placed on the need to pay attention to things going on around you. In particular as part of the idea of tracking your progress toward your desired future (your Vision). So it’s great to see some others starting to emphasise the need for agility in your personal or organisational setting

The challenge however is, ‘how’. Saying you need to be agile and knowing how to do it are two very different things, and one recent article on agility reads more like an advertisement for consulting services.

So here’s how I recommend you do it: With every strategic action you are planning to undertake (which moves you closer to your desired future), you ought to be able to list  (once you’ve thought deliberately about it) a series of signs or indicators that would tell you that your action is working in your favour. Equally important, but significantly less pursued, is a counter list of signals that would indicate your actions is NOT getting you to where you want to go. Paying attention is a shared responsibility and can be developed.

If you only pay attention to or look out for positive signals, you’ll miss opportunities to take remedial action. If you only pay attention to negative signals, you never take action. Either way, it impacts on your agility. So pay attention to both. More details on the ‘How To’ part of staying agile, can be found in my book Getting Your Future Right which you’ll find here