Our Centric Charlotte team attended the CXO forum, where guest speakers Deepak Sevak and Sandy Lynn shared their insights on implementing a “business agility” mindset across an organization that requires buy-in and active, visible participation from leadership.
While I’m usually not a blogger, I want to share my involvement with one of the most impactful career experiences I’ve had during my tenure as an IT and Business Professional. It started with inviting Deepak Sevak and Sandy Lynn of Discover Global Network to speak at a Chief Officer’s forum (CXO) in Charlotte, NC.
First, let me give you a little background. Centric Charlotte regularly participates in this local CXO forum. A usual topic of conversation at this forum is the speed at which businesses must undergo significant transformations to stay relevant. We recently explored sources and methods of sharing this broadened information with the local business leaders in the Charlotte community.
In March 2019, I virtually attended a Centric Chicago meeting called 3PM (Portfolio, Program and Project Management) hosted by Jim McCarthy. Who were the guest speakers? You guessed it— Deepak and Sandy spoke on “Changing Mindsets Through Business Agility.”
After hearing them speak, I jumped at the chance to invite them to Charlotte to attend the CXO forum on September 19, 2019, to share their story and journey – “Driving Business Agility Transformation.”
From the moment Deepak and Sandy took command of the floor, you could see the sparks flying in the room. Deepak and Sandy fully engaged attendees as they took us through their journey. They described their momentum and their ability to mature Discover’s business agility through the use of focused buckets, such as Team Agility, Team of Teams Agility, Organization Agility, Talent and Organizational Agility, and Enterprise Business Agility. They also shared their realization that they needed to pause and apply practicality to the approach, timeline and results. Discover’s multi-year roadmap was too aggressive, and they needed to make some adjustments.
The Business Agility Focus
The interactions from the attendees seemed to add even more energy to Deepak and Sandy. Additionally, Deepak and Sandy expertly described their roadmap, business drivers, hurdles, enablers and future vision in digestible nuggets. Their journey was real, not academic. Attendees could relate to every aspect of their work at Discover.
Our speakers dove into several points on how attendees could maintain traction during the ever-changing business world. Here are a few that resonated with me:
- Implementing a “business agility” mindset across an organization requires buy-in and active, visible participation from leadership. There is no shortcut – leaders must model the desired values and behaviors every single day.
- Playing the long game – it takes time to change hearts, minds and behaviors. By understanding how their day-to-day activities contribute to the organization’s ability to “win,” team members will gradually adopt the “business agility” mindset.
- Developing a passion for work – this translates into exceptional delivery, commitment and results.
- Accountability, empowerment and results – communicating the vision from the top down, establishing personal objectives from the bottom to produce results. The journey is not a destination. It’s the way of doing work well.
Hearing Discover’s journey was priceless. Through the discussion of their vision, communication style, effort, commitment, culture, they brought the academic learnings of “agility” and “business transformation” to life.
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