Designing for Urgency

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Framework Primer
Designing for Urgency
Presentation created by
Agility Capability
Identity
Urgency

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Contents
Templates
Overview
Urgency
Agility
Capability
Identity
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To compete in the Digital Age—this “Age of Urgency”—our company
needs to unleash our strategy, our structure, and our people
Presentation Overview
Taking a more adaptive approach to change can open our company to possibilities
for growth instead of possible downfall.
Our company may be performing at or near the top of our game. We have a strategy to improve
in the near future. However, in today’s Digital Age, our good performance may not last.
The challenge in maintaining dominance is not something new. Our company has often
experienced a roller coaster ride in terms of performance. Our competitive landscape is being
reshaped by Digitization, Advanced Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence.
Our organizational imperative has been redefined. We either adapt or die. Radical approaches
have be to undertaken for our company to survive in an ever changing world. This presentation
discusses the 4 key drivers for us to focus on, so that we can design our organization for
urgency:
Each driver has 2 core contributing elements, which are elaborated on further in this deck. Our
company may face a lot of bumpy roads in this “Age of Urgency.” We just need to be armed with
the right approaches and tools to gain an upper hand in this time of uncertainty.
This deck also includes slide templates for you to use in your own business presentations.
1 Taking the urgency imperative
3 Building up capability
2 Achieving agility
4 Gearing up our organizational identity

In today’s digital age, the speed with which our company learns to adapt
determines our organizational sustainability
Digital Age – Age of Urgency
Intelligent decisions are now being moved to the front line.
Technology is changing everything. As Digitization, Advanced Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
sweep across industries and geographies, the competitive landscape is being reshaped. Organizational
imperatives are being redefined. We either adapt or die.
The process now functions
more like a network and less
like a chain of command.
Our average large firm reorganizes every two to three
years. The average reorganization takes more than 18
months to implement. Wait and see is not anymore an
option; it is a death sentence.
As a result, our companies are beginning to experiment
with increasingly radical approaches. Adaptive, fast-
moving organizations must respond quickly and flexibly
to new opportunities and challenges.
Our decision making is being pushed to the “edges.” It
goes beyond employees, past the four walls of our
organization, and out to consumers and partners.

Our organization must lead with the urgency that is demanded by the
marketplace in the Digital Age
Drivers for Urgency – Overview
The emerging elements can be our company’s road map out_ freeing our company from
another re-organization.
There is no set formula for success. However, there are key drivers for us to focus on, so that we can
design our organization for urgency.
These are 4 drivers for urgency, each with 2 core elements, as outlined below.
Source: Organizing for the Age of Urgency, McKinsey, 2018
Agility Capability
Identity
Urgency
• Adopt a recipe to run the
place.
• Cultivate purpose, values,
and social connection.
• Personalize talent programs.
• Rethink your leadership
model.
• Unleash decision making.
• Reimagine your structure.
• Worship speed.
• Shift to emergent strategy.

While our company may have the pull, the drivers for urgency can give
our company the push to gain global competitiveness
Drivers for Urgency – Details
In today’s massive disruption, an ethos of urgency serves to smooth gyrations between
“hurry up” and “settle in.”
The drivers for urgency can be our company’s operative tool to gaining global competitiveness. We just
need to integrate each driver within our system.
Urgency
In competing in a marketplace
that moves so quickly, the
default outcome is to fall
behind. Our company must
reconceived as fast, quick to
turn, and even quicker to
emerge from rapid pit stops and
tune-ups.
Agility
The urgency imperative places
a premium on agility. It enables
the shift to emergent strategy,
while unleashing our people so
that they can reshape our
business in real time.
Capability
For our company to operate
with urgency and pursue the
agility that makes high
performance possible, our
company must fill some serious
capability gaps along the way.
Identity
Urgency and speed must be
channeled into stable
processes, tasks, and roles.
This is to keep our company
healthy, while moving quickly.

Contents
Templates
Overview
Urgency
Agility
Capability
Identity

Speed is the driver of urgency our company needs to tackle first
Urgency – Speed
Choosing not to fail fast comes at a price.
Speed is imperative. For us to be considered a highest-performing company, speed must be our
objective function, our operating model, and our cultural bias.
Our company must not only make “high-quality” decisions but
also “high-velocity” decisions.
Most decisions are made with 70% of the information we wish
we had. If we wait for 90%, in most cases, our company is being
slow. If our company is good at course correcting, being wrong
may be less costly than being slow.
URGENCY Speed
TO
Making a decision once you have
70% of the information.
FROM
Making a decision when you have
90% of the information.

From speed, an emergent strategy is necessary to strengthen the pursuit
of a desired result
Urgency – Emergent Strategy
Failure to recognize high-impact innovations often lead to poor returns on investments.
Facing an uncertain destination requires our company to have an “emergent strategy.” This is
a relentless quest and not a defined end point.
An emergent mix of multiple strategies needs to be formulated
and carried out.
Value-creating innovations acquired from learning by doing.
Use of incremental, close-to-the customer applications.
URGENCY Emergent strategy
TO
Realizing your objective is a
relentless, purposeful pursuit of value
creation.
FROM
Sending your objective as a predicted
outcome.

Contents
Templates
Overview
Urgency
Agility
Capability
Identity

Encouraging real-time decisions promotes agility in organizations
Agility – Decision Making
It is important that frontline employee judgments should be supported by senior managers
when these arise unexpectedly.
In a competitive environment, our company cannot survive the rapid changes in isolation or from
the top down. We need to tap a network of individuals, recognize the outperformance and resilience
that a diverse workforce will provide. Technology needs to be deployed aggressively and purposefully.
AGILITY Decision making To achieve our goals in this area, we need to understand the
taxonomy of decisions.
Greenhouse design decisions focus on choosing the
structure, governance arrangement and processes of our
company.
Big-bet decisions are concerned with the future; these are
the mergers and acquisitions.
Cross-cutting decisions take up pricing, sales, and
operations planning.
Delegated decisions and ad hoc decisions are high
frequency and low risk.
Even if long-term impact is high, bad decisions can be undone
or corrected long before significant consequences arise.
1
2
3
4
TO
Encouraging real-time decisions at the
edges of your organization.
FROM
Imposing decisions from the top
down.

For agility to be achieved, it should be supported by an effective
organizational structure
Agility – Organizational Structure
Our company must eliminate superfluous management levels, decouple decisions from
control and let go.
High performance can be sustained when our organization is interconnected and our decision
making diffused.
AGILITY
Organizational
Structure
In a complex world, what does work is to free our initiatives and
decisions from constraining hands of unnecessary hierarchy.
Many actions and decisions are best taken where the work is
done at the frontline, close to the customer.
Flatter organizations make it easier to operate in agile ways, to
speed information along, and to integrate disparate sources in
ways that boost the odds of making decisions.
TO
Creating a flatter organization and
decoupling title or rank from day-to-
day control.
FROM
Maintaining a hierarchal chain of
command, with decision-making
authority coupled to control.

Contents
Templates
Overview
Urgency
Agility
Capability
Identity

While our company builds up our organizational structure, the capabilities
must inherently be in place
Capability – Talent Programs
Effective use of advanced analytics can facilitate quick occurrence of expected results.
When direction comes primarily from “the boss,” our company will need more bosses
to keep on course. This is one reason why our companies are too tall and bureaucratic.
CAPABILITY Talent programs
If capabilities are bubble up from within and learning is
personalized for individuals, our employees can act more
urgently and effectively.
Our companies are gaining new tools such as people analytics
that enables our company to manage and develop our people
with greater precision.
Advanced analytics can deliver several benefits to our
company.
Identify and teach behaviors that can inspire.
Rigorous research and statistical analysis to inform about
people decision.
Identifying which employees would benefit most from which
type of learning opportunities.
1
2
3
TO
Customizing training for the individual,
in part by using advanced analytics.
FROM
Offering generalized training for the
“average” employee.

Building the necessary capabilities can result to the development of an
effective leadership model
Capability – Leadership Model
An effective leader rests on our ability to adapt and is on congruent with the essence
of our organization.
Central to talent development is our company’s leadership model. While no one employee knows
everything, many are likely at the leading edge of something. Leaders in Agile organizations lead less
by control than by influence.
CAPABILITY Leadership model
Leaders should strive to empower our organization as a whole.
Our leaders must be felt but not seen, inspiring but not
indispensable, and not to insist that everyone else should be
like them.
TO
Recognizing that leadership can come
from anyone, regardless of title, and is
earned, not appointed.
FROM
Elevating charismatic leaders who get
results by force.

Contents
Templates
Overview
Urgency
Agility
Capability
Identity

Our strategy is our company’s roadmap in traversing today’s uncertainty
Identity – Strategic Approach
Our organizational discipline in focusing on our strategy contributes highly to our corporate
health and operational performance.
While there is no pat answer to today’s uncertainty, following a clear strategy is an effective way
to start. A strategy is a method or plan chosen to bring a desired future. It can be a defined set
of conditions and constraints.
IDENTITY Strategic Approach
For our company to sustain performance, we must not operate
á la carte. Having four distinct strategic approaches is effective.
Having the discipline to stick with any one of these approaches
is critical.
TO
Sticking to a strategic prix fixe to
select the one approach that best
matches how you create value.
FROM
Sampling strategy á la carte from a
wide array of approaches and
methodologies.

Integral to our organization, our strategies and our capabilities is our
purpose, our values and our social connection
Identity – Purpose, Values, and Social Connection
Cultivating purpose requires that our company sharpens our sense of mission and
strengthen our employees’ social connection.
Facing the uncertainty ahead, out company must be aligned around common principles—
specifically around Purpose, Values, and Social Connection.
IDENTITY
Purpose, Values, and
Social Connection
Key objectives in this area include:
Participants making decision under defined rules of
engagement.
Collaboration to create value.
Earning the credibility to lead rather than having “leadership
improved from on high.
Our employees reach higher when energies are channeled
toward a higher purpose. Because different people find
inspiration from different sources, it takes range to strike a
chord that will resonate with almost everyone.
Our company must hit every note and mean it.
TO
Aligning the individuals in your
enterprise around common principles.
FROM
Conceiving of your organization as a
collection of roles and processes.
1
2
3

Contents
Templates
Overview
Urgency
Agility
Capability
Identity

Insert headline
Drivers for Urgency – TEMPLATE
Insert bumper.
Agility Capability
Identity
Urgency
place.
• Personalize talent
programs.
model.
• Unleash decision
making.
• Reimagine your
structure.
• Worship speed.
• Shift to emergent
strategy.

Insert headline
Drivers for Urgency – TEMPLATE ALTERNATE
Insert bumper.
Agility Capability
Identity
Urgency
place.
• Worship speed.
• Shift to emergent strategy.
• Personalize talent programs.
model.
• Unleash decision making.
• Reimagine your structure.

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for premium documents. These
documents can range from Business
Frameworks to Financial Models to
PowerPoint Templates.
Flevy was founded under the principle that
companies waste a lot of time and money
recreating the same foundational business
documents. Our vision is for Flevy to
become a comprehensive knowledge base
of business documents. All organizations,
from startups to large enterprises, can use
Flevy— whether it's to jumpstart projects, to
find reference or comparison materials, or
just to learn.
Contact Us
Please contact us with any questions you may have
about our company.
• General Inquiries
support@flevy.com
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press@flevy.com
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