The best strategies are those that achieve their intended outcome, come what may. How can you spot an agile corporate strategy, right now, today?An article by Yves Doz and Mikko Kosonen in the latest edition of Strategy magazine, published by the Strategic Planning Society, explores what makes some companies’ strategies more agile than others. It concludes that there are three ‘enabling capabilties’ that strategically agile companies have in common: strategic sensitivity, leadership unity and resource fluidity. You must have all three.To help explain strategic sensitivity (superior information, strong real-time insight and good judgement), the authors make reference to Andy Grove’s 1996 book “Only the Paranoid Survive”, which still has pride of place on my bookshelf. In the context of leadership unity, they observed that it’s key for top team members to be deeply dependent on each other. They act as interdependent contributors to an integrated corporate strategy, yet paradoxically recognise the deeper differences between their personal motives, values and drivers.Finally, resource fluidity. Without this, strategic sensitivity and leadership unity are useless. There’s no point in knowing that the market has just shifted direction and having a leadership team united in adjusting the corporate strategy, if the financial, human and other resources needed to execute strategy are all locked into the version that was going to work yesterday but has now been overtaken by events. So a revealing way to spot a truly agile strategy is to look at the actual fluidity or inertia in the allocation of resources. As priorities change, how quickly are investments and people reallocated, in ways that sustain and enhance strategic outcomes? Is it resource fluidity or inertia that is driving the corporate culture and planning processes?Which brings me to an observation from my own experiences: look at a company’s plans for investing in change. Compare how much of the total planned investment is already allocated to projects, versus held in provisions for allocation later. In some companies the answer is all, and none, respectively – a strong signal that those companies are not as strategically agile than others. But they may, of course, not need to be. Related content BrandPost Retail innovation playbook: Fast, economical transformation on Microsoft Cloud For retailers, tight integration of data and systems is the antidote to a challenging economy. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 3 mins Retail Industry Digital Transformation BrandPost How retailers are empowering business transformation with TCS and Microsoft Cloud AI-powered omnichannel integration and a strong, secure digital core lets retailers innovate across four primary areas while staying compliant, maintaining security and preventing fraud. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 4 mins Retail Industry Cloud Computing BrandPost How to Build ROI from Cloud Migration This whitepaper and webcast can help you calculate the ROI and create a business case for modernizing your legacy applications to the Microsoft Cloud. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 1 min Retail Industry Cloud Computing BrandPost How to power a sustainable enterprise on Microsoft Cloud In this eBook, we’ll follow the journey of Amal Skye, a fictitious woman who is committed to living in a way that preserves the planet for the future —and how businesses like Tata Consultancy Services and Microsoft are making that possi By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 24, 2023 1 min Retail Industry Green IT Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe