The Platform of Agile Management ─ And the Program to Implement It

The children of the Internet Revolution – the likes of Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Robo-advisors, crypto-finance - are revolutionizing swaths of business sectors. They were born with a fundamentally different mindset, which makes them agile and ambidextrous. They seriously challenge traditional organizations, which have lost their initial impetus.

Of course, traditional organizations have not stood still either. Many of them have innovated products, processes, partner relations, and even their business-policy. However, most of their efforts have been focused externally, i.e. on the markets. In contrast, internally their mindset and their methods have remained tightly trapped in traditional tenets.

To adapt to the new business environment, an increasing number of CEOs are launching programs of management innovation. Yet, according to executive surveys, 70% of them result in partial or total failures. Such a disappointing outcome can hardly be improved as long as these programs are conceived and carried out with a traditional approach.

The agile management platform which Willy Sussland presents in Leading Agile Innovation shows nine key principles, paradigms and practices associated with encouraging innovation across your workforce. The ideas builds on the following guidelines, some of which were advocated in the context of IT projects by the creators of the original Agile Manifesto, (Jim Highsmith et al, 2001):

• work project-by–project
• break down the activities in small but connected chunks
• empower self-managed teams
• frequent reviews
• foster internal/external collaborations

The Platform of Agile Management provides you with a coherent and cogent structure for changing the way your organization works to assure systems and structures that enable, rather than constrain, agility.

Dr. Willy Sussland is the author or co-author of over a half a dozen business-books as well as of a string of papers that build on his experiences consulting with the senior management of multinational corporations and of public enterprises; lecturing strategic management to post-graduate MBAs; in ascending international positions with multinational corporations.

Dr. Sussland started his consulting career with Arthur D. Little. Based in Europe and then in the USA, he carried out assignments in Europe, in North America, and in Latin America focused on business-strategy and on marketing strategy. As a Vice President of Business International, he acted as an advisor to to CEOs and to senior executives. Then, as an independent consultant he worked also for large consultancies. Dr. Sussland now acts as advisor.

A member of the faculty of the University of Geneva (Switzerland), he lectured post-graduates on strategic management. Then, as a member of the faculty of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (Switzerland) - ranked 31st overall in the 2015 QS World University Rankings – Dr. Sussland lectured post-graduates on ? World Class Management ?, a program that he designed. He also lectured this program to post-grads at the Ecole Nationale Ponts et Chaussees, Paris.

Willy Sussland earned his MBA from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), and his DBA from the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland). He is licensed to present the company self-assessment program of the European Foundation for Quality Management.

His positions with high-tech multinationals include: manager Eastern Europe Area, Corning International based in Europe and then at the US; manager distributor sales Western Europe, Middle East, Africa, Exxon Office Systems based in Geneva (Switzerland). He was a director of Otesca, Caracas (Venezuela) a nation-wide distributor of equipment.