By Dr Roshan Boojihawon, Senior Lecturer in Strategy
Department of Strategy and International Business, University of Birmingham
Not every retailer knows how to be agile, so let us try and learn from those who do – ballerinas!
Supply chains are volatile, unpredictable, messy, and disrupting every retailer’s plans to ensure as normal a Christmas as possible for the public. It would seem the ongoing pandemic is winding up even more like ‘The Grinch’, with the recent mini-lockdown likely to worsen matters as every retailer and consumer contemplates how to celebrate Christmas as normally as possible. But if supply chains are determined to kill the joy of Christmas shopping, retailers do have a secret weapon: and that entails them embracing ‘agility’.
Not every retailer knows how to be agile, so let us try and learn from those who do – ballerinas!
‘Agility’ has become a hugely popular buzzword during this pandemic, somewhat overused and confused, which has made it a problematic concept for retailers to embrace and integrate into their strategy and operations in navigating the uncertain waters of this pandemic. If understood well, ‘agility’ can be the North Star to guide us out of this chaos.
In the ballet world, ‘agility’ is instructive terminology. Ballet dancers are agile leaders who share four critical capacities, which add to effective resilience that sustain their performance. These four capacities relate to:
- their core strength and stability amid rapid and sometimes extreme movements
- the ability to change focus quickly and move with confidence in the right direction
- the flexibility and range of motion to know when to step out of a space or forge ahead
- a clear sense of where you want to go, staying one beat ahead of the music.
These inspirational yet straightforward competencies of the ballet dances give us the awe-inspiring, thrilling and speechless experiences we all marvel at when enjoying ballet performances, and we remain passive to what goes on behind the scenes. This might be no different to us as excited Christmas shoppers who are thrilled at the thought of our presents being delivered on time and oblivious to how seamlessly our retailers delivered them to us. But, be warned, ‘The Grinch’ is at work already, and it will ‘prevent’ that from happening if our retailers leave it for too long before they grasp this ‘agility’ philosophy of the ballerinas.
Research studies on strategic agility and decision-making speed provide us with similar lessons. To achieve desired strategic agility, leaders and their teams, as ballet performances, must determine organisations’ capacities to harness entrepreneurial behaviours, talents and activities at speed in the face of ongoing uncertainty. So, here is what retailers can do on more practical levels to implement this ‘agility’ into their retailing practices:
- Agility needs retailers to refocus on their core strength: their core strengths are at the heart of agility, reminding the retailer of its core values — that is, what they stand for and what provides them with purpose in their business. These values keep them steadfast against any odds that come their way, they are not easily swayed by uncertainty.
- Agility needs retailers to triage and shift their focus quickly: no doubt, this kind of quick shift is demanding on their core strength but it also requires confidence in movement, that is, knowing where they ultimately want to be but being open to different ways of getting there.
- Agility needs retailers to flex their operations and technology to maximum potential: for a retailer, flexibility is required not only in the change of direction, but also in how ideas are generated, where those ideas come from, and the speed at which (team) expertise is brought in to solve problems. This requires keeping an eye on the now and what’s next simultaneously.
- Agility needs retailers to be clear about their next strategic position: that is, to predict the immediate next move and to move with confidence. Like the ballet dancer, who has a continuously evolving awareness of where the next move should be, the retailers need to be slightly ahead of the next step. They might not have a one-year or even three-year plan, but they do have a clear vision of what their immediate next move should be.
Agility should not be confused with retailers trying to push and stretch every limit of their strategy and operations in coping with the current crisis; they will burn out sooner than they expected and submit to the will of The Grinch! I am not suggesting that retailers should put on their ballet shoes and become ballet dancers. Instead, their dedication, hard work, and innate capacities give us a clear sense of what agility is and how it can be achieved well for Christmas.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Birmingham.