The aspect of the leadership challenge that was selected for the study is agility. Staying agile is one of the most fundamental challenges for leaders. Leaders should remain agile in the face of ever-increasing technology to face the demands for change. DeakinKo (2017) emphasizes that leaders who are not agile enough may stagnate an entire team and, eventually, the organization itself. Hence, leaders should continually review themselves and reflect on where they are and what they have learned to become agile and capable of leading through transformation. Despite its pervasiveness in business, research on agility in strategic communication is limited (Dühring & Zerfass, 2021). Therefore, the problem of staying agile warrants further research.
Corporations are confronted with a more complicated environment, fierce global rivalry, and a faster rate of change in the marketplace. Dühring and Zerfass (2021) acknowledge that digital transformation compels them to make significant changes in the areas of strategy, organization, product creation, and service delivery. A considerable topic frequently mentioned in this context is agility, which means that companies should become more flexible, efficient, and responsive by finding creative ways of organizing and engaging with stakeholders (Dühring & Zerfass, 2021). Denning (2018) presents essential data on agile techniques. First, Agile has been adopted by businesses of all sizes and ages. Second, Agile is primarily a mindset that needs motivating solid leadership. Having an agile mindset is more critical than any particular Agile management style, procedure, system, platform, or organizational characteristics.
Agile management is viewed as a required reaction to changing external reality. Denning (2018) asserts that globalization, privatization, knowledge work, and digital innovations have fundamentally altered the marketplace. Faced with more competition, a quicker pace of work, digitization of everything, and technology that established the consumer as the ruler, many businesses felt that conventional leadership was no longer viable (Denning, 2018). The ability of leaders, particularly senior leaders, to create significant new mindsets and talents is critical to a successful agile transition.
Significantly, agile companies have developed as living systems to prosper in an uncertain, fast-changing environment. These companies are both solid and dynamic; they focus on consumers, react quickly to changes in the environment, and are inclusive, transparent, and nonhierarchical (De Smet et al., 2018). Furthermore, Agile businesses are constantly evolving and welcome ambiguity and uncertainty. De Smet et al. (2018) acknowledge that this new type of agile company necessitates a radically different leadership style. A recent study reveals that the most significant challenges to and facilitators of effective agile transitions are leadership and how leaders impact the organizational culture (De Smet et al., 2018). Thus, it is vital to address the leadership challenge of staying agile.
The research question is “How leaders can stay agile to adapt to environmental changes and extend their competencies?” According to De Smet et al. (2018), leaders require three new sets of competencies for agile transitions. They must first alter themselves to develop new individual mindsets and habits. Second, they must restructure their teams to operate in innovative ways. Third, it is critical to developing the competencies needed to convert the business by incorporating agility into the structure and culture of the whole firm. These are the hypotheses of the study that need to be proved via primary research.
The fundamental aim of the research is to investigate agile firms and the opportunities and ways for leaders to become more agile. It is essential to discuss mindset shifts that leaders should foster to promote an atmosphere of creativity, cooperation, and value creation. According to De Smet et al. (2018), self-disciplined leadership emerges in agile companies, guided not by the threat of punishment or penalty but by service of purpose and meaning. As a result, the research will concentrate on leadership approaches to agility. It is critical to highlight how leaders must maintain agile teams centered on external or internal customers and provide value for them by recognizing and solving their unfulfilled and possibly even unidentified demands.
A qualitative approach would be most appropriate to address the problem, record leaders’ voices, and compare their perspectives. Semi-structured interviews with competent leaders from agile firms should be conducted to demonstrate how agile mindsets alter organizational culture. The interviews will provide crucial information on how leaders can stay agile to adapt to environmental changes and extend their competencies. Dühring and Zerfass (2021) suggest that routine activities and everyday business duties are frequently addressed conventionally. At the same time, special corporate-wide projects appear to be more agile, not necessarily through the use of agile tools, but rather through the introduction of different ways of leadership, cross-functional teams, and flexible and dynamic strategies for arranging and assessing tasks (Dühring & Zerfass, 2021). Thus, participants’ recollections and reflections are used in semi-structured interviews to assist them in reviewing their experiences (Lauterbach, 2018). As a result, the interviews can aid in exploring secondary topic areas from leaders’ perspectives, which can inform their pre-reflective comprehension of the phenomena.
References
De Smet, A., Lurie, M., St. George, A. (2018). Leading agile transformation: The new capabilities leaders need to build 21st-century organizations. Web.
DeakinKo. (2017). What is the biggest challenge facing leaders today? Web.
Denning, S. (2018). The challenge of leadership in the age of agile. Leader to Leader, 2018(89), 20–25. Web.
Dühring, L., & Zerfass, A. (2021). The triple role of communications in agile organizations. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 15(2), 93-112. Web.
Lauterbach, A. A. (2018). Hermeneutic phenomenological interviewing: Going beyond semi-structured formats to help participants revisit experience. The Qualitative Report, 23(11), 2883-2898. Web.