As we continue exploring key themes of major importance for the banking and financial services sector during the current crisis, we turn our focus to how organisations can develop greater agility.

For some, the initial stages of the crisis affirmed the positive nature of their ability to be agile, particularly the robustness of Business Continuity Planning solutions, but for others, it left some very difficult questions to answer about how quickly they could adjust to different states. Whether it went well or not, there are lessons to learn.

As organisations focus on what their key learnings are and how they respond, this is best achieved through a combination of inward reflection, and outward observation of how others were successful or otherwise challenged during this period.

Three main areas we see for consideration are:

1. Understanding what the crisis taught you about your own agility

What did and didn’t work well? By exploring where were you able to able to move very dynamically and where it was more difficult will uncover areas where teams can learn from each other and improve. You may discover that this was due to technology, people and skills, leadership and the ability and freedom to innovate in times of need.

2.Learning from your own strengths and those demonstrated by others

What can be learned by sharing experiences through debate and discussion with peers, through other forums or third party organisations? Getting fresh perspectives, especially from other sectors can be of great benefit here.

3. Making agility a natural state

As organisations look forward, the agility that they build in should not be just for business continuity purposes. Agility must be built into the day-to-day of how they think, act and respond to any type of situation, whether it be a new competitor, changes to rates or customer need; how quickly can teams respond and react?

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