Christopher G. Worley (CEO), Thomas Williams (PwC Strategy LLP), Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) explain how agile organizations continuously adjust to changing circumstances by, for example, launching new products or eliminating old ones, entering new markets or exiting underperforming ones, or building new capabilities. This requires management processes that can support adaptability over time.
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
Available Content
How HR Supports Organization Agility, 2/29/2016
In this webinar, Chris Worley and Sue Mohrman, Senior Research Scientists and Directors of CEO’s Organization Design Program, describe the foundations of agility – how the full systems design using the Star Model compliments today’s VUCA world.
Changing Tires on a Moving Car: Management Processes that Support Agility
The term “agility” gets tossed around a lot these days. Strategists tout the virtues of strategic agility, fast strategy, and resilience.
Becoming Agile: How the SEAM Approach to Management Builds Adaptability
Becoming Agile: How the SEAM Approach to Management Builds Adaptability illustrates the process of becoming an agile organization. Reflecting the principles presented in The Agility Factor, readers are taken on a real-world journey of transformation and change. This...
Agility’s Dirty Little Secret
Christopher G. Worley (CEO), Thomas Williams (PwC Strategy), and Edward E. Lawler III (CEO)
The Agility Pyramid describes how the four agility routines and management processes work together to keep an organization’s capabilities effective and refreshed.
Organization Agility and Talent Management
This article by Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) and Christopher G. Worley (CEO) uses case studies on Netflix and oDesk to show that organizations can create an agile workforce by adopting a set of talent management practices that encourage employees to learn and develop, and by reducing the transaction costs associated with changing the skill sets in their workforce.
Executive Team Member Needed
Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) shares how in order to survive, organizations have had to keep pace with the changes that have occurred. In the future they will have to keep up with an increasingly rapid rate of change in order to survive.
Misconceptions Of Agility, 10/6/14, recording/slides
In this webinar, Chris Worley, Tom Williams, and Ed Lawler will present and discuss several of the leading “misconceptions of agility”.
The Agility Factor: Building Adaptable Organizations for Superior Performance
In The Agility Factor: Building Adaptable Organizations for Superior Performance, the authors (Christopher G. Worley, Thomas D. Williams, and Edward E. Lawler III) reveal the factors that drive long-term profitability based on the practices of successful companies that have consistently outperformed their peers.
Talent Agility is Critical
Although there is great agreement that organizations have to get better at changing, there is much less agreement on what organizations need to do in order to become more agile. In our recent book, The Agility Factor, Chris Worley, Tom Williams, and Edward E. Lawler III (CEO) provide an answer.
Assessing Organization Agility: Creating Diagnostic Profiles to Guide Transformation
This “short format” publication by Christopher G. Worley, Thomas D. Williams, and Edward E. Lawler III is a “tools” product that describes how to assess an organization’s level of agility. The book features two forms of assessment.
So you Want to be Agile? Find a Balance Between “Fat” and “Muscle”, 1/10/2013
In this webinar, Chris Worley and Sue Mohrman will describe their learnings about designing organizations for agility. There are many paradoxes inherent in such designs. Agility requires accepting a certain amount of slack that absorbs the risk of investing in their future while relentlessly driving down costs in present operations; experimenting on the one hand while systematically incorporating what is learned on the other; and developing people to be ready for the future while making them expert in the present. In agile organizations, change is routine.