Agility isn’t speed. It’s frictionless adaptability.
In fast-moving organizations, agility often gets mistaken for speed. But being first to the finish line doesn’t help if you’re on the wrong racetrack. Real agility isn’t about how fast you move—it’s about how thoughtfully you adapt.
Over the last decade, most companies operated from a predictable playbook. Since 2020, that’s changed. Geopolitical shocks, economic shifts, social movements, and the acceleration of AI have made one thing clear: there is no longer a set formula. Organisations are navigating more complexity than ever, and the ability to adapt without breaking is now essential.
That means building systems and teams that can flex with purpose, not panic. Too often, urgency gets confused with progress. Leaders react instead of reflecting. HR ends up firefighting, and agility breaks down.
Why agility is breaking down in modern organizations
In uncertain times, leaders often default to control. That instinct is understandable, but harmful. Command-and-control structures can stifle the very responsiveness agility requires. Innovation pushes one way, fear pushes back, and HR is left to reconcile the tension.
This is the difference between authoritarian and authoritative leadership. The former demands obedience, while the latter builds trust and clarity. Real agility needs the latter.
Fragmented systems also make everything harder. When tech stacks are cobbled together, data becomes disjointed, workflows collapse, and people lose momentum. The result? Frustration, fatigue, and friction across the business.
Control feels safe—but it slows you down
Leaders often try to control whatever they can in a chaotic world. But that instinct creates false certainty. People end up over-engineering processes that should be flexible, or clinging to systems that should be retired.
One of the most common issues I see: leaders don’t pause at critical moments to ask, “What should be standardized, and what should stay flexible?” They just grip tighter. And the tighter the grip, the slower the organization becomes.
HR ends up stuck in the middle—playing traffic cop, patching workflows, or working around rigid tools that weren’t built to scale.
Tool sprawl makes this worse. In boom times, teams add best-in-class tools for every function. In leaner times, they consolidate quickly without rethinking integration or process design. Either way, it’s a mess. Eventually, people stop focusing on the problem and start focusing on their preferred tool. That’s when progress stalls entirely.
The real cost of rigidity
When systems are too rigid, people stop solving problems and start working around them. They jerry-rig spreadsheets, duplicate data, get frustrated, and make mistakes. Leaders spend more time playing traffic cop than asking the bigger questions.
I’ve been there. Early in my career, I worked as a payroll data entry clerk. My job was to take information from new hire forms, key it into one system, and then mail those forms to someone else, who would key it into another system. That kind of workflow still exists today, only now it’s digital.
These workarounds take a toll. HR teams get trapped maintaining systems that were never built to scale. They become excellent patchers. And the better they patch, the less urgency leadership feels to invest. Eventually, you’re forced to choose: Let the system break to prove your point, or keep hiding the pain.
Rigid workflows also lead to change resistance. People lose trust. They focus on executing tasks, not solving problems.
This is where agility dies. When teams can’t see the purpose behind their work, they default to compliance over contribution. And you lose the ambition, curiosity, and adaptability that drive growth.
That’s why I always say: Buy for where you’re going, not where you are. If you plan to double in size, don’t choose a system that just fits today. Choose one that lets you grow into it. I like to use the toddler clothes analogy. If someone asks what size to buy, I say: buy for six months from now. Otherwise, by the time the item arrives, it’s already too small.
What does flexibility look like in practice?
This is where system design matters. Flexible platforms don’t just improve efficiency—they empower better decisions.
Permissions are a good example. Instead of giving 100 percent access to a handful of gatekeepers, smart systems offer configurable access so more people can retrieve the information they need directly. When people don’t have to wait a week for an answer from HR, they actually use the data and make better decisions. That’s what creates shared reality. Teams might disagree on how to respond, but at least they agree on what’s true.
Flexibility also means building a system that works for multiple stakeholders: HR, Finance, People Ops. Everyone working from the same source of truth. Less friction. Less duplication. Less time spent translating data.
Earlier in my career, I had to create decks that covered every possible data angle, just in case a leader asked a question. Now, with real-time dashboards and filterable views, I can answer on the fly. I don’t lose momentum. I don’t have to say, “Let me get back to you.” That’s what modern HR needs: systems that let us stay in the conversation, not pause it.
What HR leaders really need from their tech stacks
When I talk to HR leaders about what they need, it usually boils down to three things: consistency, unity, and flexibility.
- Consistency means accurate, structured data that doesn’t need cleaning before it’s usable. I’ve spent too much time wondering why a “numbers only” field in Excel has letters in it. That’s not strategy. That’s cleanup.
- Unity means integrated systems. When your data lives in silos, people avoid using it—or worse, they simplify complex decisions just to avoid data wrangling or convincing another department to share data. A unified platform allows you to ask nuanced questions without migrating data between five tools.
- Flexibility means the ability to explore those questions in real time. It’s not just about having dashboards. It’s about having dashboards that can be filtered, reshaped, and segmented based on what you’re trying to answer right now.
These three together form the foundation for people-first agility.
Reframing the role of HR in enabling agility
Business agility requires more than tools. It requires clarity, prioritization, and the ability to delegate complexity.
In many companies, leadership makes decisions behind closed doors, then hands them down. But people don’t have context. They can’t see over the hill. They’re not on the same page. That’s why communication matters. So do decision rights, and so does having a central hub of information that everyone can trust.
Empowered excellence: Removing friction from growth
HR has become the organizational “grab bag”. If something doesn’t belong to another department, it lands in HR. This mix of administrative upkeep and emerging challenges means HR professionals are constantly switching between creative, strategic work and narrow, precision-based tasks. That shift in focus is exhausting and leads to burnout.
Automation helps. It frees HR to stay in the dynamic, people-focused space longer. It also lets HR teams scale without growing exponentially just to keep up with headcount or geographic expansion.
A well-automated HR platform gives you room to invest in the stuff that moves the needle instead of drowning in policy updates and manual data entry.
Ambition: Fueling high performance
One of my favourite theories of motivation says people are driven when they believe three things:
- I can do the thing
- If I do it, I have a fair chance at getting a reward
- That reward is something I value
Right now, many organizations are failing on all three counts. People don’t know what to expect. They don’t trust that effort will be rewarded. And even if it is, they’re not sure it’s worth it.
HR systems can help fix that by bringing transparency to compensation, skills alignment, and progression. People stay motivated by seeing how their work links to outcomes and rewards. If they can’t, you’re just playing whack-a-mole with dissatisfaction.
Resilience: Supporting wellbeing through system clarity
Fragmented systems don’t just slow people down. They burn them out.
- App switching can cost the average employee up to 5 weeks a year
- Task switching reduces productivity by up to 40 percent
- Multitasking can increase error rates by up to 50 percent
These challenges only grow as businesses expand. What works in one region might not work in another. From labor laws and hiring practices to parental leave and commuter benefits, every new office tests your assumptions.
Global flexibility means knowing what stays standard and what gets adapted. That’s why I tell teams to focus on building an adaptable “container.” This means having a clear set of values and standards that define your goals and the range of acceptable methods. From there, you can pick from a wide range of specific ways of achieving those goals that match both the circumstance and your core identity. Anything that doesn’t fit both isn’t an option.
The structure must be solid, but the inputs need room to flex. That’s how you scale without breaking.
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Outcome-orientation: The insights HR leaders actually need
HR doesn’t need more data. We need better relationships between data points.
The first is about cause and effect. We need to be able to say: When engagement drops, does quota attainment fall? If we improve onboarding, does retention increase? Instead of simply reporting a score, HR wants to understand what it predicts and how it can be used to influence outcomes.
We also need benchmarks. What’s a reasonable span of control for our context? What’s the normal hiring speed in this region? Can we afford to hire 20 more people this quarter, or will it blow the budget? Similarly, metrics like average hiring times, notice periods, and team productivity need to be contextualised against geography, function, and trendlines to drive smart planning. HR doesn’t need more numbers. It needs better judgment tools.
The platforms that help HR see these connections—between people data and business outcomes—are the ones that make us more strategic.
Final thoughts
You can’t control everything. You shouldn’t try. The human touch is important, but finite. It needs to be saved for what matters most.
Let your systems handle the friction. Free your people to lead, create, and solve what actually needs solving. You won’t keep all the balls in the air. So choose the ones that matter, and then let a few drop, so you don’t lose them all.
This is not a moment for incrementalism. It’s a moment to broadly reimagine what good looks like and start progressing in that direction, even if it hurts for a little while. Agility begins when you stop plugging holes and start building the next dam.
