Agility means going against the grain of traditional business to develop a new understanding of leadership and management in the digital era. Read how LRNLAB and innogyConsulting view this inevitable shift in organizational structure.

1. AGILITY
A new buzzword, or an ability required by
organisations for their survival in the digital era?

3. LRN LAB
We connect worlds and people! Coming from the background of a
large corporate energy company, we reinvented ourselves as the
Learn Lab (LRN LAB). As a start-up we embark on our own learning
journey to deal with the complexity of the digital era. Our mission is
to support companies and people with the digital transformation.
Learning to cope with uncertainty, in our opinion, is one of the main
strengths and capabilities in this fast-changing world. As LRN LAB
we experiment with new approaches in our own team and turn our
experiences into products and new formats. Customers appreciate
our approach, which may be based on enquiry and at other times may
give them guidance and structure. When creating solutions, we can
draw from our experience as a start-up, as well as from the group
transformation of RWE and Innogy. Although we cannot predict
the future, we are convinced that we need robust theories to make
future-oriented decisions. Our interdisciplinary team of agile coaches,
systemic change consultants, trainers, e-learning experts, and trend
analysts can facilitate both major digital transformations and smaller-
scale trainings for Design Thinking or Agile Leadership. In this context,
we implement the perspective of systemic metatheory, by offering an
alternative to plan-based linear thinking and taking into account the
systemic complexity of companies and their environment. Change
begins with the recognition that change itself is not just another
corporate target, but rather the endeavour to deconstruct one’s own
patterns in dealing with the environment. In this process, a new future
opens up almost automatically.
A whitepaper from LRN LAB by innogy Consulting

4. Authors
Andrea Kahlenberg is the founder of LRN LAB
and has been supporting companies and teams in
transformations and systemic change processes
for 20 years.
Jumana Klotsch is co-founder of LRN LAB and has
been working as a process facilitator and coach in
the context of major change, transformation and
leadership development programs for 10 years.
Jenny Fadranski is a political and cultural scientist
and is investigating the complex world of digital
transformation as a Future Analyst at LRN LAB.

5. Contents
Executive Summary 6
Agility – a new buzzword? 9
AGE OF DISRUPTION
High market dynamism and disruption are not
fundamentally new features 12
Companies must challenge themselves 15
COMPLEX WORLD – COMPLEX ORGANISATIONS
Corporate cultures are changing 22
Complexity needs both stability and flexibility 25
AGILITY & LEADERSHIP
Self-organisation as key to success 32

6. 6 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Executive Summary
The white paper entitled ‘Agility – a new buzzword, or an ability,
required by organisations for their survival in the digital era?’ casts
light on the new economic conditions questioning traditional forms
of organisation and culture as well as traditional models of control.
Often the solution, we are told, is agility. But what lies behind this
concept, and what purpose does it serve?
In the 21st century, the data-driven companies of internet economy
achieve the biggest profits. The exponential growth of information,
knowledge, computer performance, and data storage capacity is
leading to the disruption of entire industries. In this regard, platforms
are the predominant business model. Companies are thus increasingly
obliged to ask themselves how they should make use of technological
progresstobecomepartofdigitalisation.Buttheymustalsotakeother
considerations into account, for example cultural transformation, the
increasing alienation of human beings in hierarchical organisations, and
agrowingneedformeaningfulwork.Agilecompaniesseemparticularly
well-suited to deal with increased complexity, because they perceive
uncertainty as a resource and achieve greater productivity against the

7. 7Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
background of internal self-organisation. Agility combines numerous
theories, organisational models and methods, helping companies to
challenge rigid hierarchies and processes. In this context, agility does
not mean the absence of rules – on the contrary, a company achieves
agility through an exceptionally productive combination of stability
and flexibility. The development of an agile mindset and agile struc-
tures calls for a new understanding of leadership and management.
An organisation, wishing to become more agile, must query the status
quo on the levels of attitude, structures, and networking both within
the organisation and outside. The important thing is to identify the
areas which, in view of new market requirements, need a more flexible
design.

9. 9Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Agility – a new buzzword?
This is one of the most common terms you will hear in many organi­
sations today. Organisations want to be agile, teams are supposed
to work in an agile way and everything, suddenly, needs to happen
so much faster. Is this movement just a farce, or are we really faced
with a serious phenomenon? The fact is that successful organisations
in the digital age are noticeably quick to adapt to changes in their
environment. Globalisation increases the intensity of flows of goods,
information, and migration, thereby destabilising the political and
economic order. The political scientist Ian Bremmer refers to this
as Zero Gravity World. What he means here is the growing political
instability in view of shifts in economic power. But the term can also
be understood as a status description of a world in which economic
conditions are volatile, technological advances are exponential and the
cultural evolution of humans challenges old values and organisational
modes.

11. AGE OF DISRUPTION
What questions do companies face in times of high
market dynamics?

12. 12 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?12
High market dynamism and disruption are not
fundamentally new features
The dynamism of actual markets has striking similarities with that
of the manufacturing age. Up to the year 1900, high transport costs
meant that most markets had just a short range, and were local and
narrow. Competitors could avoid each other. This direct contact forced
creativity and generated dynamism.1
After 1900, falling transport
costs were responsible for the emergence of new mass markets,
which were wider in range and comparatively sluggish. Companies
could expand their businesses without any problem, and at the
same time optimise their internal processes. Taylorism and Fordism
were characterised by scientific management, which introduced and
enforced strict division of labour and work planning – with resounding
success, as industrial production grew to a hundred times of what it
had been before within two generations.2
Since the 1980s, market
dynamism has again risen drastically, as market liberalisation, the
invention of the internet and global trade have resulted in networking
on a wider scale. In the new network economy, all players operate
globally. The planning and controlling methods, which resulted in great
value creation under Taylorism, cannot longer cope with the speed
and complexity of today’s dynamic markets.
1 Oestereich & Schröder, 2017, p. 4
2 Ibid
Companies that were both 1955 and 2016
amongst the Fortune 500.
Quelle: Perry, 2016

13. 3M
Abbott Laboratories
Alcoa
Archer Daniels Midland
Ashland
ATT
Avon Products
Boeing
BorgWamer
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Campbell Soup
Caterpillar
CBS
Celanese
Chevron
Deere
Dow Chemical
DuPont
ExxonMobil
Freeport-McMoRan
General Electric
General Dynamics
General Mills
General Motors
Goodyear Tire and Rubber
Hershey
Honeywell International
Hormel Foods
IBM
Coca-Cola Enterprises
ConocoPhillips
Crown Holdings
Cummins
CVS
International Paper
NCR
Pfizer
Lear
Lockheed Martin
Marathon Oil
McGraw Hill (now S&P Global)
Monsanto
Navistar
Northrop Grumman
Owens Corning
Owens-Illinois
PepsiCo
Procter and Gamble
Raytheon
Rockwell Automation
Sealed Air
Johnson and Johnson
Textron
Kellogg
United States Steel
Kimberley-Clark
United Technologies
KraftFoods
Weyerhaeuser
Whirlpool
Only 60 of the Fortune 500 in 1955
were still among the most
successful companies in 2016.

14. 14 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
According to a statistical study by the American Enterprise Institute3
most companies in the Fortune 500 have failed to master these
challenges in the last sixty years. Only 60 of the Fortune 500
companies from the year 1955 still belonged to this group in 2016.
An explanation for this big fluctuation of companies can be supplied
by disruption theory. At the beginning of the 1990s, the economist
Clayton M. Christensen of the Harvard Business School defined the
phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovations are
described as innovations making products and services more acces-
sible and affordable, and resulting in the acquisition of many more
customers.4
Disruptive innovations can creep upwards progressively, as the
example of Netflix shows. Netflix started its business as a postal
DVD rental company, in competition with video stores. Disruptive
innovations can also destroy existing markets within a very short
period, as it is the case of Google Maps. Within a year, the market
for navigation equipment and the associated software had been
completely overtaken by this free-of-charge map and navigation
software provider. The technological process in particular, along with
the exponential growth of information, knowledge, computer perfor-
mance, and data storage capacity and the resulting technologies,
functions as a disruption driver. The smart use of new technologies
will be decisive for corporate success in the digital 21st century.
3 Perry, 2016
4 Christensen et al., 2015

15. 15Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Companies must challenge themselves, if they
do not want to be the next victim of disruption
What are organisational forms and culture called for, if companies are
to make the best use of technological advances and keep up with the
flow of successful digitalisation? An essential credo of digitalisation
says “disrupt yourself”, before somebody does it to you. This principle
was recognised by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at an early stage, who
commissioned a team to destroy Amazon’s own book business back
in 2006 – at the time its second most successful area, second only
to its trade in music. He gave them this project just after turning
down the offer from Apple’s then CEO, Steve Jobs, to work together
with Amazon to develop a music streaming service. Apple launched
iTunes and made massive inroads into Amazon’s core business. Bezos
realised that self-attack is the best mode of defence.
Platforms are currently the predominant business model in the digital
industry as they offer value-creating interactions between customers
and producers. They facilitate this interaction by using digital tech-
nologies. Costumers and producers enjoy direct platform access to
market to use or distribute services. The big advantage of the plat-
form model lies in the fact that companies no longer need any assets
of their own, which tie up capital. An overview of the most successful
platform companies today reflects this trend:

16. 16 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
<< The world’s biggest taxi company owns no taxis (Uber)
<< The world’s biggest hotel chain owns no property (Airbnb)
<< The world’s biggest phone companies have no
telecommunication infrastructure (Skype & WeChat)
<< The world’s biggest retail dealer has no inventory (Alibaba)
<< The most popular media owner creates no content (Facebook)
<< The most rapidly growing banks have no money of their own
(SocietyOne)
<< The world’s biggest streaming platform does not own a cinema
(Netflix)
<< The world’s biggest software suppliers do not programme the
apps themselves (Apple & Google)
Top 5 of the world‘s most valuable brands.
Source: Parsons et al., 2016

17. Coca-Cola
50 B
IBM
50 B
Google
66 B
Microsoft
69 B
Apple
145 B
Facebook
53 B
In 2015, 3 out of the 5 most valuable brands
are from the internet economy with an
overall brand value of 280 B.
In 2016, already 4 of the 5 most valuable brands
are brands from the internet economy with an
overall brand value of 364 B.
Coca-Cola
59 B
Microsoft
75 B
Google
83 B
Apple
154 B
2015 2016
The most powerful brands today are emerging
from the internet economy.

18. 18 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
The biggest value-creating companies of the 21st century come from
the internet economy, where you would struggle to find an assembly
line. Instead, internet services create valuable data amounts suppor-
ting the generation of large sums of money. For example, they support
the development of smart machines, facilitate more deliberate product
placement and feed algorithms which are constantly making business
processes more automated. The economic growth of the 20th cen-
tury on the other hand was mainly based on mechanical production
for commercial purposes and Tayloristic organisational principles like
planning and controlling. In agile organisations, which can handle the
complexity of the internet economy, these principles have been repla-
ced by self-organisation and new kinds of latitude.

21. How do flexibility and stability create an agile
corporate culture with the power of identification?
COMPLEX WORLD –
COMPLEX ORGANISATIONS

22. 22 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Corporate cultures are changing – people seek
meaning in their activities
It isn’t just the business model of successful companies in the internet
economy that differs from the business models of the industrial era.
We are also observing a massive transformation of organisational
and working culture. In his bestseller ‘Reinventing Organizations’5
,
the former McKinsey partner and author Frederic Laloux focuses on
changes in collaboration and leadership in organisations. In the age of
digitalisation, old-style organisational leadership has reached its limits,
Laloux concludes, adding that many employees and executive staff see
work on the whole as a necessary evil. How can we counter digitalisa-
tion’s complexity, and how can people be given a chance to rediscover
enthusiasm for and meaning in their work? The forms of collaboration
and leadership models need a radical change, so Laloux. The crucial
question for organisations is how they cope with the complexity that
has come into being recently on the level of structures and processes.
From cybernetics expert Ross Ashby we know that a system will be
better capable of handling a complex and dynamic environment to the
extent that it is able to make use of its own inner complexity. And
inner complexity arises through multifarious social networking – in
5 Laloux, 2015
Organisation-wide agile transformations in
relation to perceived instabilty of business
environment.
Source: Ahlbäck et al., 2017

23. 30
40
50
Travel, transport, logistics
Instable
business environment
Agile
transformation
Automotive,
assembly
Advanced industries
Consumer packaged goods
Oil, gas
Retail
Media, entertainment
Telecommunications
Private equity and principal investors
Healthcare system and services
Infrastructure
Public sector
Professional services
Basic materials
Social sector
% of respondents reporting organisation-wide
agile transformations at their companies by industry
Low to high perceived instabilty of business environment
Electric power,
natural gas
High tech
Pharmaceuticals,
medical products
Financial
services
20
30
40
50
Advanced industries
Companies that perceive the business environment of their
sector as instable have begun agile transformation.

24. 24 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
other words, it is based on the available communication possibilities. It
is a matter of increasing the social density.6
The concept of agility combines numerous theories, organisational
models and methods, capable of encouraging self-organisation and
internal complexity. In the VUCA world (the acronym stands for
Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), organisations with
great internal complexity are economically more successful. They are
more like living organisms than like rigid hierarchies, and self-organi-
sation enables them to mobilise new resources. A study by McKinsey7
shows that companies whose industries are particularly subject to
uncertainties, are likely to introduce change processes with the goal
to become more agile.
6 Oestereich & Schröder, 2017, p. 20
7 Ahlbäck et al., 2017

25. 25Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Complexity needs both stability and flexibility:
what can agile organisations do better than
others?
The agility of a company is created through a particularly productive
combination of stability and flexibility in structures, processes and
roles. Putting it into a paradoxical way, agile potential means that you
can decide to act not in an agile but in a rock-solid manner. Agility
thus needs precisely the decision about which elements, in terms
of processes, structure and roles, need to be kept stable and what
elements need to be dynamised.8
Agile organisations must consciously
decide which teams, processes and structures function in an agile way
and which ones are less suitable. Agile companies are distinguished by
a radically (in the sense of ‘from the root up’) decentralised structure
as the definitive organisation principle.9
Organisations that want to
become more agile must therefore challenge the current status quo
on the three levels of individual and organisational attitude (values
and mindsets), individual and organisational responsiveness (self-or-
ganisation of structures and processes), and networking (horizontal
and vertical structures, exchange of knowledge and knowledge
management) to rearrange themselves and learn from experience.
In companies we can observe different approaches. On the one
hand new units are founded as start-up hubs to develop innovative
ideas, test out different modes of working, and integrate these into
8 Eidenschink, n.d.
9 Oestereich & Schröder, 2017, p. 20

26. 26 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
the parent group later on. Another approach is to implement agile
lighthouse projects, in which the new working mode is expected to
demonstrate its success. Some examples of German companies, by
way of illustration, are given below.
A start-up platform founded by Bosch serves as incubator for new
business ideas, that are tested within various innovation clusters, such
as connected industry or mobility. A successful agile partnership was
realised between Bosch and the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla.
Bosch functioned as a supplier of chassis and safety systems. Many
of the hardware and software components can be precisely adapted
for the various requirements of the individual vehicle models. The
development and implementation could be carried out in half the
standard development time. In another project, Bosch was able to
develop a new, networked sensor solution for asparagus cultivation in
just three weeks of development. The temperature in the earth where
the vegetable is grown can be communicated to a smartphone. This
makes it easier to create the best possible growing conditions. The
short development time resulted from the use of agile procedures and
methods of interdisciplinary teamwork. Agile solutions are suitable in
situations where the technologies, or the approaches to development
of a solution, are to some extent still unclear to begin with, and where
the requirements for a new product are going to be subject to change
in the course of time, says Bosch CEO Dr Volkmar Denner.10
Daimler created the hackathon series Digital Life Campus, held in
Stuttgart, Bangalore, Beijing and Silicon Valley. The objective was to
10 Denner, 2015

27. 27Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
build an autonomous, driverless RoboCab from Lego components. As
a result of the events, the automotive group acquired new employees,
doctoral candidates, work experience trainees, and working students.
The students developed 54 ideas; four prototypes are currently being
evaluated by the various specialist departments, and another 16 ideas
are being scrutinised.11
In 2014 Lufthansa set up the Lufthansa Innovation Hub in Berlin to
encourage the digital transformation of the company. With an eye to
structural changes and macro and micro trends on the travel market,
the aim was to develop concrete products in response. This went hand
in hand with the introduction of the Lufthansa Open API, bringing
together 80 different data pools that can be accessed by developers
and partners at developer.lufthansa.com.12
But all these efforts are a long way from being enough. In his book
‘Silicon Germany’, Christoph Keese draws the conclusion: Too little
money, too many worriers, too little courage, not enough innovative
spirit – these factors are dangerous impediments to the impetus
of start-ups in Germany.13
One reason for this, Keese thinks, is the
German zero error culture. He argues that successful companies are
rethinking the concept of error. Innovation steps become bigger when
you are willing to take a certain measure of failures on board. And
then there is the unresolved question of reintegrating the innovation
hubs, digital labs, and innovation teams. How can the experiences of
11 Bayer et al., 2017, p. 39
12 Bayer et al., 2017, p. 76
13 Keese, 2016, p. 211

28. 28 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
these teams be brought back into the everyday life of the company,
and integrated with existing working processes?14
Then too, the question of the meaningfulness of one’s own work
and the meaning of the organisation is increasingly affecting the
performance of German companies. With Laloux, we may say that the
organisational performance influences the economic performance.
Laloux here describes three success factors of the evolutionary
organisation as shown on the right.
According to Laloux, energies are released by meaningfulness,
self-leadership, learning and the improved use of talents; there is less
loss of energy caused by the assertion of the ego, less loss of energy
caused by conformity, less energy lost in discussions.15
It’s the small to medium sized enterprises that are experimenting
with self-organisation. At the Trumpf company 4500 employees,
from production assistants to executive staff, were allowed to decide
over a period of two years how many hours they wanted to work.16
At
the vegan condom manufacture Einhorn, the 8-hour work day was
abolished.17
The digital agency Elbdudler has introduced a system
whereby its employees can be paid the salary they ask for.18
These
concrete measures of increased self-determination and self-organi-
sation encourage the development of a different kind of mindset, and
have positive effects on the performance of the company.
14 Keese, 2016, p. 66
15 Laloux, 2014, p. 288
16 Astheimer, 2014
17 Boes, 2018
18 Astheimer, 2014

29. 1) Power is multiplied when every individual acquires
power, not just a few people at the top (self-leadership);
2) power is used with greater wisdom, because people put
more of themselves into their work (holism); and
3) somehow everything finds its own proper place,
because people connect their power and their wisdom with
the life force of the organisation (evolutionary meaning).
­— three success factors of the evolutionary organisation

31. What are the keys to agile corporate structures and
what does agile leadership look like?
AGILITY & LEADERSHIP

32. 32 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Self-organisation as key to success: do we then
still need leadership at all? Three principles for
agile leadership
The answer is yes – leadership is always going to be necessary.
However, it is undergoing a process of transformation. Agility is also
needed in leadership, of the sort, which is particularly distinguished by
the fact that it is distributed among many rather than just a few people.
Agile leadership comprises the three levels of attitude, responsive
structures and networking. Leadership focuses ­increa­singly on
shaping the right framing conditions, on rolemodelling the values
and behavioural attitudes that are seen as desirable and on network
management. Leadership also has to resolve conflicts, and to decide
in case of escalation.
Leaders need to ask the following questions in particular: How does
this company basically work? What decisions are taken, why and
by whom? What processes need how much rapidity, flexibility and
stability? What patterns and dysfunctionalities can be identified? In
most cases faulty developments are less attributable to employees
than they are down to the ingrained and daily repeated behavioural
attitudes in the company. These are caused by structures, and, as a
result, give rise to dysfunctional patterns.
What companies that want to become more
agile need to question.

33. THE ORGANISATION’S RESPONSIVENESS
Is the organisation capable on the level of processes and
structures to change fast, and to adapt to changing conditions?
MINDSET OF EMPLOYEES AND LEADERS
How adaptable, teachable and self-organised
are employees and top executives?
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL NETWORKING
Is the company able to perceive new trends,
changing market conditions and values?
?
?
?
AGILE PERFORMANCE
Organisations that want to become more agile must
question the status quo at the levels of attitude,
responsiveness and networking.

34. 34 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Agile leadership principle no. 1: attitude
Aperson’sattitudefeedsonhis/herfundamentalconvictions,assump-
tions and experiences. With an eye to developing an agile organisation
it is crucial that individuals should become conscious of the complexity
and fragmentary nature of the world. We have the choice whether we
fall victim to the error of supposing that the world is comprehensible
and easy to explain and that the powerful determine the state of the
world and the company. We can likewise acknowledge the complex
interconnections of the many systems (human being, family, company,
state, economy, law, leisure) and scrutinise polarised thinking in terms
of opposites like good and evil, right and wrong, success and failure.
This is a complex exercise itself, as we human beings have learned to
think in a linear way and it is difficult for us to think in exponential and
systemic terms.
Just as with the individual, fundamental convictions and patterns
come to be established in organisations as well – for example a trust-
based attitude to people, or alternatively a coexistence characterised
by mistrust. The values of the agile manifesto19
, which originated with
software development, sum up the necessary attitude of the ‘agile
mindset’ effectively.
But to avoid this being just a scratch on the surface, the new be­-
­havioural modes need to be anchored in the structures of a company.
Christoph Keese describes the way in which at Netflix neither working
hours, working days nor periods of leave are clocked up. The founder
and CEO Reed Hastings, moreover, does not have a fixed office of
his own and is a leader of the new age: The Netflix CEO lives out an
19 Beck, 2001

35. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Responding to change over following a plan.
­— Values of the agile manifesto

36. 36 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
understanding of his role that could become a standard for many
managers in the age of digitalisation. Executive staff no longer take up
a position in the foreground, but rather keep themselves back. They
hardly ever assign concrete tasks any more, but rather put the right
questions and give teams the job of finding the answers. They hardly
ever formulate rules any more, but rather concentrate on effectively
getting across their own culture. They do not hand out instructions
from above to below, but distribute impulses in all directions. They do
not think in terms of fulfilling plans, but uncover truths, identify weak
points and reward honesty. They do not disempower, but encourage
freedom. They are not complacent, but are always challenging them-
selves and their business models. They do not put on a show of
strength, but display vulnerability. They are not insecure, but take
care to avoid any excessive assurance. They do not give orders but
listen. They despise status symbols and ask for acknowledgement
to be based on their projects. They do not control any structure of
commands, but rather coordinate working groups.20
In most companies, moreover, it is not clear what role is assigned to
employees who are the object of leadership, so to speak. Employees
too have a responsibility to adopt a self-determining attitude in relation
to those in leadership positions: in being conscious that no one has
power over them, unless they give it to them; that they will be disap-
pointed and also disappoint others. Employees can ask themselves:
am I aware of my changing environment, do I learn from others and let
others learn from me, do I talk to others rather than passing judgment
on them, and do I share important information with the other person?
20 Keese, 2016, p. 168

37. 37Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Agile leadership principle no. 2: responsive
structures
Responsiveness means the ability of the organisation to respond
adequately and adapt to market conditions. This generally succeeds
only when complex problems are tackled on an interdisciplinary basis.
Agile structures avoid the distribution of work and any kind of differen-
tiation in the value creation process. Agility lays more emphasis on the
question of which value-creating activities are necessary in order to
satisfy the requirements of the market, and how an autonomous team
can handle the associated tasks.21
In concrete terms, this means that
thinking in terms of specialisation and special areas of expertise must
givewaytoanewkindoflogic.InGermanindustries,inparticular,Keese
states, thinking and organising in terms of specialist departments and
specialisations was a big factor for success in the past, as it resulted
in top-quality industrial products. With digitalisation, however, it has
become a problem. Rethinking the situation is a difficult business,
because it entails a loss of certainty – because expanding horizontally
means branching out into the unknown. Nobody knows anybody in
this alien field, nobody knows what the rules are and people are no
longer conscious of their own strengths. When a person feels good
as a member of his own specialist group, he isn’t going to want to get
active as a builder of bridges.22
According to Keese we can only escape
from this pattern with the help of a leadership culture that calls for
audacity and encourages experiments. But the zero-error culture in
Germany makes this practically impossible.
21 Kasch, 2013
22 Keese, 2016, p. 60

38. 38 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Laloux formulates the necessary restructuring in a much more radical
way, under theheading of ‘structures andprocesses of self-­leadership’.
In evolutionary organisations the traditional pyramid model is replaced
by an interlocking system of structures, processes and practices.
Holacracy refers to a concrete concept of an alternative form of
hierarchy, designed to bring about greater flexibility and release the
creative potential of self-organisation. Brian Robertson, the founder
of Holacracy, defines the concept as a social technology for the
control of organisations, understanding these as organisms, which
feel, adapt, learn and integrate new things.23
The central component
here is the transfer of power from person-related leadership to
power, which is constitutionally based. Immediately, when a company
introduces Holacracy, the CEO must sign a constitution, whereby
he or she surrenders power to the agreed processes and rules it
embodies. Within a Holacracy, recruitment is not on the basis of job
descriptions. Instead roles are defined, which meet a specific function
in the company. In this context a person can embody several roles.
Teams organise themselves. This makes control of the organisation
increasingly decentralised, because it takes place on many different
levels. The biggest company organised as a Holacracy is Zappos, an
online trader with 1500 employees. In addition, there exist numerous
methods, where it is not a matter of restructuring of fundamental
company hierarchies. These methods help different processes and
behavioural attitudes to be established that are capable of giving rise
to greater agility. The commonest contemporary methods, to mention
just a few, are Design Thinking, Scrum and Lean Startup.
23 Robertson, 2015, p. 7

39. 39Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
Agile leadership principle no. 3: networking
The more global networking increases, the more companies also
become a part of complex networks. The communicative networking
leads to fundamental reorganisation of work and of the organisation
itself. In theoretical and practical terms, a company can float in the
Cloud completely, with all its data and can be accessed from any
part of the world. But its internal structures as well generally tend
to resemble networks rather than the classic form of an organi-
sational diagram. In particular, information technology supports a
higher degree of internal and external referentiality. What would the
structure of a company be like, if the company sees itself as being a
network? Rigid structures and hierarchies, such as reproduced in the
classic organisational diagram, would lose their legitimacy. The focus
would tend to shift from positions and committees in the direction of
processes and the presentation of different hierarchies, like those of
competence, experience and formal power of decision.
More diversity and the distribution of intelligence and knowledge
make it possible for companies to generate more ideas and wider
latitude of action. Agile companies are permeable, i.e., the organisa-
tion itself is receptive at many points to the outside world, and can
feed the information received into the internal processes of product
improvement and innovation. In concrete terms this means that the
employees and the company are connected with customers, suppliers
and other players. It must be possible for the information to be inter-
nally processed as a matter of routine and in appropriate ways, so that
the conclusions for business are drawn. Christoph Keese concludes
that it depends on an intelligent combination of horizontal and verti-
cal networks. Individual business units can be organised vertically as
a pyramid. Amongst themselves, however, they should have a strong

40. 40 Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
horizontal aspect. Pyramids on a small scale often make just as much
sense as networks on a large scale. In this model, the task of the CEO
no longer consists in passing on concrete instructions from above to
below, but rather in managing the network skilfully and distributing
resources, like funds and personnel, over the network on an efficient
basis. The most important responsibility of corporate managers in the
digital future could be summed up as practising network manage-
ment, creating connections, organising the exchange of information
and staying out of the limelight.24
Wecanstateinconclusionthatagilitymustbeseenasanindispensable
competence of organisations in the digital era. There is no black or
white, however, companies must decide for themselves how much
agility makes sense for which structures and processes. In view of
the increasing complexity of our working world, what is needed is
above all a change of mindset and attitude on the part of corporate
decision-makers. Classic hierarchies and cascaded decision-making
processes are giving way to new organisational structures, where
employees and teams have more responsibility for themselves and so
find more meaning in their work. Agile organisations are those, which
have understood that this calls for an organisational culture where the
consistent scrutiny of the status quo, the courage to experiment and
fail and the decentralised distribution of power are enshrined in the
DNA of a company, and not just lived out in the context of a lighthouse
project or digital hub.
24 Keese, 2016, p. 247

41. 41Agility – buzzword or ability required in the digital era?
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43. Imprint
Andrea Kahlenberg, Jumana Klotsch, Jenny Fadranski
Agility – A new buzzword, or an ability required by organisations
for their survival in the digital era?
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