Business Agility Quotes

“Incremental climate adaptation needs to shift to exponential climate adaptation.”
― Roger Spitz, The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation

“Alignment is a force multiplier.”
― Gereon Hermkes, Scaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“If you can't scale, you can't scrum.”
― Gereon Hermkes, Scaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“There seems almost a shared society-wide delusion at play where we all accept that wasted effort is just a fact of life.

And that is fine.

Or rather, it would be fine if we had already conquered hunger in the world.

Or if half of the world’s children would not live in poverty.

Or had we become a multi-planetary species, protecting us from a planetary catastrophe.

But we have not.

Quite the opposite, our species is actually threatened from several quarters, yet we insist on having some of our best people waste their lives LARPing instead of contributing.”
― Gereon Hermkes, Scaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“Waste is more than a crime; it's a mistake.”
― Gereon Hermkes, Scaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“When you decide to take a step to the right, you expect all parts of your body to work in unity to take that step. Actually, you do not even expect it; it is just as natural a feature of
our existence as drawing breath. You would be dumbfounded if not outright terrorized if your left leg suddenly moved in the opposite direction.

While this is an everyday occurrence in the corporate world, with organizations aimlessly ambling about like zombies, the problem of moving in unity becomes even more urgent if we truly aim to achieve business agility. It is only when we can harmonize the decentralized decision making in the teams with the intent of senior leadership that we can achieve real business agility.

Imagine your organization moved like your body: If there is an unexpected noise in your environment, your whole body turns in that direction to assess the situation and address possible threats that might come towards you. How great would it be if your organization did the same?

Flexibly reacting to changes in the environment without friction, discussion,
or delay, just a seamless and natural response — would that not be true agility?”
― Gereon Hermkes, Scaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“Agile is not your goal—it’s only the best way to achieve your goals.”
― Zuzana Šochová, The Agile Leader: Leveraging the Power of Influence