5 Easy Steps to Creating Agile Organizations

Let’s Dumb It Down: 5 Easy Steps to Creating Agile Organizations

Many people seem to like a good “5 easy steps” format, so let me use this format for something that’s not so simple: Creating Agile Organizations (CAO).  As you might know, CAO it’s not about frameworks and I don’t like random opinions—so, here’s one way to evolve your organization in five deceptively simple steps:


  1. Start with Strategy

    First things first—clarity. Define the objectives that matter most for your business. Then identify the desired capabilities you believe are needed to deliver on those objectives. Everything else follows from this foundation.


  2. Identify the Capability Gaps

    Where are you stuck? What’s holding you back? Study your organization to identifiy capability gaps and prioritize the right improvements to build a foundation for design decisions.


  3. Design Product Groups with Proven Guides

    Design your teams into product groups focused on delivering on a purpose and value proposition. Use CAO’s proven organization design guides to drive decisions based on the capability gaps you’ve identified. Take a systemic approach by including all essential parts(teams, roles, processes) in your product group, and the design for optimized interactions between these parts.


  4. Decouple Product Groups to Build Resilience

    Here’s where it gets fun: minimize dependencies between product groups with decoupled purposes and shared services so they can act as independently as possible. This makes your organization more adaptable, reduces bottlenecks, and builds resilience for whatever comes next.


  5. Launch Incrementally and Adapt

    Change isn’t a switch you flip—it’s a journey. Roll out your product groups in phases, test the design in practice, learn from real-world results, and adjust as you go. Agility is about continuous improvement, not one-time fixes.

What Makes CAO Different?

Well… frameworks are useful, but not sufficient. The CAO approach uses proven methods and real-world experience to help you evolve your organization tailored to your goals—not someone else’s playbook.

Want to see what’s possible? Visit Creating Agile Organizations.