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Inspiring
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Why Agile Works

David Ritter and Lindsay Chim • The Boston Consulting Group © 2019

Management / Management Concepts / Agility

Take-Aways
• Employees want their jobs to be meaningful. It’s up to company leaders to communicate the purpose of
each employee’s job.
• Companies going through agile transformations by creating more flexible and autonomous teams run the
risk of failing to align each unit to the overall company strategy, leaving employees disoriented.
• Agile organizations must establish consistent alignment among the company’s overall purpose, the
objectives of discrete business units and the daily work of individual employees.
• Meanwhile, autonomous teams must be clear about the scope of their independence when pursuing
specific outcomes.
• Agile transformation, if properly executed, can boost levels of employee engagement more than 90% and
improve customer satisfaction.

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 Recommendation
“Agile” is no longer just a buzzword. Many organizations have shifted from a siloed, hierarchical
organizational model to a flatter and more fluid company structure, hoping to be able to respond to change
more quickly and effectively. Yet not every organization succeeds at realizing the promise of agile. David
Ritter and Lindsay Chim from Boston Consulting Group describe a critical success factor in acualizing agile’s
potential.

Summary
People look for meaning in their jobs. An employee who understands his or her job’s purpose is more
engaged and productive – yet it falls upon company leaders to outline how each work task contributes to the
company’s overall goals and objectives. Providing this degree of clarity and coherence can be challenging,
especially in large, complex organizations or at companies that undergo major organizational change.
Companies that seek to adopt an agile model by reorganizing their teams into smaller, more flexible and
autonomous “squads” or “tribes” run the risk of failing to align each unit to the overall company strategy,
leading to overall confusion and a sense of disorientation.

“People want their jobs – and their companies – to have meaning, and they look to their
companies’ leaders to define clearly what outcomes they are trying to achieve.”

To ensure that organizations stay on task and employees remain engaged, agile organizations must establish
consistent alignment among the company’s overall purpose, the objectives of discrete business units and
the daily work of individual employees. Agile organizations empower teams to work autonomously toward
team outcomes. Yet to keep the autonomous units aligned, company leaders must communicate desired
objectives clearly and consistently throughout the organization. The head of a North American retail bank,
for example, tasked one of his teams to move 10% of call center traffic to the bank’s website and mobile
app, with the overall purpose of increasing customer satisfaction. He left the specifics of how to achieve the
desired outcome up to the team. Some team members worked on software upgrades, while others created
promotional campaigns. The head of the retail bank, however, was pleasantly surprised to discover that
each team member, regardless of what he or she was working on, was able to recite how the team’s target
outcome of reducing call center traffic was connected to the bank’s larger purpose of improving customer
satisfaction.

“One of the most powerful benefits of agile is the ability to quickly recognize when things
are going off course and to adjust on the basis of learning.”

To create the same clarity of focus across agile organizations, leaders must ensure that each team or group
is clear about how their short-term objectives align with the company’s overall strategy and values. At the
same time, the teams must be clear about the scope of their independence when pursuing specific outcomes.
When leadership breaks down goals into blocks of work and assigns them to individual teams, leaders must
make sure that teams coordinate among themselves and regularly update one another on their progress.
Teams that stay well-informed are faster at correcting course if circumstances change or if they veer off
target. Meanwhile, being clear about the overall purpose of team tasks facilitates and improves decision

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 making at the micro level. Surveys suggest that agile transformation pays off: Agile can boost levels of
employee engagement to more than 90% and improve customer satisfaction three to four times.

About the Authors

David Ritter and Lindsay Chim are directors at the Boston Consulting Group.

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