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ABSTRACT
Workplace agility is emerging as the highest priority for the providers of workplace services and infrastructure. 'Agility' means continuously improving work and the infrastructure that enables it. An agile workplace is one that is constantly transforming, adjusting and responding to organisational learning. Agility requires a dynamic relationship between work and the workplace and the tools of work. In that relationship the workplace becomes an integral part of work itself - enabling work, shaping it and being shaped by it. This paper focuses on defining workplace agility and discusses the triggers that prompt agile workplace making. Strategies for creating agile workplaces are discussed and the idea of 'rehearsing' change is introduced. This paper is excerpted from 'The Agile Workplace', which introduces the business and technology forces that drive and enable agile work. The report includes chapters about change management, organisational responsibilities and performance metrics.
Keywords: agility, work, situated work practice, experimentation and rehearsal, workplace making
BEYOND ALIGNMENT TO AGILITY
Today's organisations are making concerted efforts to align their workplaces and the work that takes place within them. Physical aspects of these workplaces are being deliberately altered to match the work. And options for physically housing the workforce and for providing supporting technologies are part of these efforts.
The alignment of space and work was considered innovative - if not radical -only a decade ago; today, it has become mainstream practice. Alignment of work, space, and information technology (IT) has, in fact, become a practical necessity for all organisations. However, today's competitive pressures, changing work practices and high uncertainty require something more: something called operational agility. Agility is the ability over time to respond quickly and effectively to rapid change and high uncertainty. In the context of the workplace, that agility is achieved through the co-evolution of workplace and work. That co-evolution is only possible when the work is clearly understood and when it is recognised that that work should be continuously improved over time. Work must be understood in its particulars, not merely by function or job classification. Once agility is achieved, the organisation has the ability to alter work-a-day activities with a minimum of friction and delay.
Agile workplaces represent the next important step in workplace evolution. They are created by the...