One of the many buzz words that has been bandied about by academic and leadership gurus over the past few years is the concept of “Agility.”  A quick search of Google returns more than 58 million hits in less than half a second.  While there are many great definitions, tools, applications, and usages of the tool called agility, too many business leaders have found them to be “soft” and note very practical in a volatile and complex business environment.  For example, one of the executives I work with shared with me a concept one of her HR Business Partners brought forward for some sort of workshop called the “Waterfall” approach to business agility.  The Waterfall Agility approach is based on the idea that the development and delivery of a company’s products and services are built exclusively around a process where you hire only well-trained and mature “experts” for critical jobs and these experts hand their work “over the wall” to the other experts that are moving very quickly to fulfill the promise to customers. This entire framework is built on the notion that experts are very good workers and never have to look back; but, if they make a mistake they can adjust quickly and keep moving forward.

One of the most interesting things that I have observed during the past few months of working with large global organizations is that too many of them are trusting their R&D leaders to make critical business decisions without providing them with the Business Acumen skills and tools they need to make the right business choices.  Think about the pharmaceutical company, the technology company, or the chemical company who is investing billions of dollars into R&D and product development by empowering teams to bring new products to market without the skills or tools to know if their decisions and actions will be successful.

I apologize in advance to all of my colleagues and friends who are HR Business Partners.  This blog is a non-traditional perspective about what Advantexe thinks are the practical things organizations and leaders who care about development should be doing in order to acquire, develop, and retain the Emerging Leaders who are the future of your business.

In a time of doom, gloom, and economic stagnation, the business world was pleasantly surprised by the recent financial news coming from Netflix.  After several flat quarters in a row, Netflix added 3.6 million new members in the third quarter of 2016 which surpassed their own expectations and the expectations of Wall Street.  Netflix now has more than 86 million subscribers.

One of the most interesting aspects of my job as a lead consultant designing, developing, and delivering business simulation-centric Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling learning solutions is having the unique opportunity to meet and work with hundreds of business professionals a month.