Executive Summary
According to the 2024 Business Agility Report organisations are increasingly focused on becoming more agile, but the top 3 challenges hindering progress are:
- Leadership Challenges: Leaders face pressure to make fast decisions amid market uncertainty and the rise of AI. Balancing strategic vision with execution and prioritising resources are major struggles. Successful organisations need leaders who can align strategy with team goals and use tools like OKRs and TeamForm for better decision-making.
- Organisational Structure Challenges: Silos and inefficiencies slow down workflows. Instead of restructuring teams constantly, businesses should focus on organising around value streams. Flow mapping and workforce visualisation can help identify bottlenecks and optimise resource allocation.
- Governance Challenges: Overly complex governance slows decision-making. To resolve this, organisations should clarify decision rights, simplify controls, and integrate them into work processes. Cross-functional teams can manage governance tasks within value streams, reducing friction and maintaining compliance.
This article provides practical insights into what can be done to address those challenges based on their experiences working with customers from various industries.
Challenge 1: Leadership - The Cornerstone of Agility
In today’s fast-paced and uncertain business environment, leadership challenges are more pronounced than ever. The report identifies leadership as the number one challenge organisations face, with its impact echoing across all areas of business.
Leaders are under increasing pressure to make tough decisions due to rapid market changes, heightened uncertainty, and a laser focus on cost and efficiency. The explosion of AI also presents both an opportunity and a challenge in terms of adaptation.
Now, more than ever, leaders must embrace change and adapt to new ways of working, especially when it comes to implementing AI and improving efficiency. However, many leaders find it challenging to articulate what needs to be done and why—an issue that becomes increasingly evident in annual planning cycles.
Sub-Challenge 1: Strategic Thinking vs. Tactical Execution
One of the most significant obstacles leaders face is balancing strategic thinking with tactical execution. While leaders are able to define end goals, they often struggle to set a clear strategic direction. This can result in strategies that feel “fluffy,” making it hard for leaders to make informed decisions about where to play and how to win. This lack of clarity trickles down to teams, who are left working with vague objectives.
What you can do:
- Successful organisations need leaders who can provide strategic focus and clearly communicate their vision. Leaders must align top-level strategy with individual team goals to ensure organisational success. TeamForm can help leaders gain clarity, offering visibility into team workflows and aligning teams to work and strategic priorities.
Sub-Challenge 2: Prioritising and Aligning the Workforce
Another critical leadership challenge is the ability to make tough decisions regarding priorities. With finite resources, leaders must decide what work to pursue based on available capacity. It’s tempting to take on everything, but the reality is that there’s often more work than people to do it.
What you can do:
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Use TeamForm to help leaders gain visibility into team workloads and how individual tasks align with broader strategic objectives. This visibility empowers leaders to make better decisions, ensuring that critical goals are achieved while less urgent tasks are postponed.
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Use frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and outcome canvases can bring clarity by defining strategic intent and measurable goals, helping leaders align their teams with the organisation’s broader vision.
Challenge 2: Organisational Structures – Unlocking Flow
Organisational structure challenges are among the most common hurdles identified in the Business Agility Report. Complex silos and inefficient workflows make it difficult for businesses to create streamlined processes that enable agility. However, the solution doesn’t lie in constantly restructuring teams—it’s about improving visibility and breaking down barriers to enable smoother work flow across departments.
Sub-Challenge 1: Breaking Down Silos to Improve Flow and Alignment to Outcomes
A major issue in organisational structures is the presence of dependencies. Work often flows through multiple business units, creating delays, inefficiencies, and poor collaboration.
What you can do:
Instead of frequently restructuring teams and reporting lines, organisations should focus on organising around value streams—groups that deliver a product or outcome from start to finish.
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Create Clear Visibility: Leaders must understand the entire end-to-end workflow—from ideation to delivery—to prioritise resources effectively and make informed decisions. Start with flow mapping to help identify bottlenecks and adapt your structure to address them.
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Align on Shared Outcomes: Map your teams to a common goal with clear, shared metrics. Without alignment, priorities become muddled and work stalls.
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Empower Teams: Equip teams with the skills and ownership they need to manage the entire value stream, from concept to customer delivery. This ensures clarity around responsibilities and helps uncover inefficiencies or gaps.
Sub-Challenge 2: Visualising Workforce and Capabilities
As organisations scale, leaders often struggle to see their workforce as a whole, which can result in poor decision-making and inefficiencies.
What you can do:
- Leverage platforms like TeamForm to gain visibility into your workforce — understanding who’s available, what skills they possess, and how their capabilities align with strategic outcomes. This helps leaders make more informed decisions about resource allocation and team structure.
Challenge 3: Governance – Tackling "Governance Rage"
“Governance rage” is a real barrier to achieving true organisational agility. It refers to the frustration that arises when governance structures become overly complex or difficult to navigate, slowing down decision-making and creating unnecessary tension. Often governance rage is created when leaders or execs think that they don’t have the right controls.
The good news? Governance doesn’t have to be a bottleneck—and it starts with clear decision-making, transparency, and embedding controls directly into the flow of work.
Sub-Challenge 1: Clear Decision Rights and Accountability
A common governance issue is a lack of clarity around decision rights and accountability. When leaders are unsure where decision-making authority lies, it leads to bottlenecks and confusion.
What you can do:
- **Define decision rights at every level of the organisation—**particularly within value streams. When teams know what decisions they can make, they can act quickly without waiting for approval from multiple layers of leadership, improving execution and reducing friction.
- Another key change is replacing traditional business case documents with “living memos**”—**dynamic, evolving tools that capture the key outcomes, goals, and metrics needed for decision-making. This approach ensures that decisions remain relevant and aligned with ongoing organisational strategies.
Sub-Challenge 2: Embedding Controls into the Flow of Work
Traditional governance models often involve stopping work at multiple stages for reviews or risk assessments, disrupting flow and slowing down delivery.
What you can do:
- Embed risk management and governance controls directly into the work itself. By introducing clear "guardrails" within the workflow, teams can stay compliant without halting progress.
- Introducing cross-functional “safety teams” within each value stream ensures governance, risk management, cybersecurity, and compliance are part of the daily activities. These teams can provide timely support and ensure that everyone knows who to consult for guidance.
Sub-Challenge 3: Simplifying and Leaning Governance Controls
In many large organisations, governance controls can become so complex that they hinder decision-making. Streamlining these controls is essential for agility.
What you can do:
- Review your current governance controls and eliminate unnecessary complexity. Narrow down your list to just 4-6 key controls that can be applied across the organisation to reduce friction and increase efficiency.
Conclusion
The journey toward business agility is both challenging and rewarding. By addressing the key issues of leadership, organisational structure, and governance, organisations can unlock their full potential and achieve sustainable growth.
The actionable insights provided in this discussion—such as breaking down silos, fostering value streams, and embedding governance into workflows—offer practical steps to drive meaningful change. As businesses continue to adapt to a rapidly evolving environment, leveraging tools like TeamForm and adopting lean principles will be crucial to success.
At TeamForm, we’ve seen firsthand how visibility and alignment transform organisations. By connecting strategy, teams, and work in real time, businesses can overcome the challenges of leadership, structure, and governance, delivering better value to customers and driving sustained performance.
If you’d like to learn more or have any questions about your organisation’s business agility challenges, reach out to Martin Foster or Maria Muir on LinkedIn or book a call with them today!