Share Your insights and Anecdotes for the Business Agility Report - Fourth Edition

The Business Agility Report Survey is Open

Many years ago, while visiting Bengaluru to attend the annual Agile India conference, I had the opportunity to hear Linda Rising speak. I’ve always found her inspiring, but in this talk her words were a call to action for me.

“The plural of anecdote is not data.”

The original aphorism, by scientist Ray Wolfinger, was just the opposite: “The plural of anecdote is data.” And yet, both Ray and Linda are correct.

Linda was referring to the fact that many of the sacred cows in the agile community are based on personal experience - then extrapolated to become a global truth. In other words, “if it worked for me, it must work for everyone.” This isn’t bad per se—many of these experiences are broadly applicable—but without testing it’s impossible to know which experiences are and which are not.

One of the first research initiatives we launched was the Business Agility Report. Now in its 4th year, this report is a statistical analysis of how organizations around the world are adopting business agility, what’s working for them, and the challenges they are facing along the way.

In 2020, we had the opportunity to compare companies undertaking a business agility journey prior to and during the COVID-19 global pandemic—to see how similar organizations were affected by the crisis as it unfolded across the globe. Here are some of our most fascinating finds:

We found a significant impact between COVID-19 and geographical region, with average business agility capabilities in Asia increasing by 25% post-COVID and average business agility capabilities in North America dropping by 10% in the same period.
Organizations that involved their HR / People Operations functions in their journey were more likely to increase their business agility capabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Respondents indicated that customer satisfaction is one of the most significant organizational benefits realized by organizations that have measurable success with business agility.
Respondents indicated that, by a large margin, leadership style is the biggest challenge to business agility adoption faced by most organizations.
Generally, and not unexpectedly, small organizations have more agility than larger ones. This plateaus at around 200 employees.

In 2021, we need your insights and anecdotes. It only takes 15 minutes and all results are anonymous.

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About the Author

Evan Leybourn's is the founder of the Business Agility Institute. He has experience while holding senior leadership and board positions in both private industry and government has driven his work and passion in business agility.

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