Remote working means no commuting, which can make work more accessible for people with disabilities; the flexibility can be particularly helpful for single parents and caregivers. 2. From lines and silos to networks technology quickly toward value-creating and and teamwork value-protecting opportunities. In a 2017 McKinsey survey, agile units performed significantly better Stop relying on traditional than those who weren’t agile, but only a minority organizational structures of organizations were actually performing agile “We used to have all these meetings,” a CEO recently transformations. Many more have been forced to told us. “There would be people from different do so because of the current crisis—and have seen functions, all defending their territory. We’d spend positive results. two hours together, and nothing got decided. Now, all of those have been cancelled—and things didn’t Agile companies are more decentralized and fall apart.” It was a revelation—and a common one. depend less on top-down, command-and-control Instead, the company put together teams to deal decision making. They create agile teams, which are with COVID-19-related problems. Operating with a allowed to make most day-to-day decisions; senior defined mission, a sense of urgency, and only the leaders still make the big-bet ones that can make or necessary personnel at the table, people set aside break a company. Agile teams aren’t out-of-control the turf battles and moved quickly to solve problems, teams: accountability, in the form of tracking and relying on expertise rather than rank. measuring precisely stated outcomes, is as much a part of their responsibilities as flexibility is. The Start locking in practices that speed up decision overarching idea is for the right people to be in making and execution during the crisis position to make and execute decisions. The all-hands-on-deck ethos of a pandemic can’t last. But there are ways to institutionalize what One principle is that the flatter decision-making works—and the benefits can be substantial. During structures many companies have adopted in crisis and after the 2008 financial crisis, companies that mode are faster and more flexible than traditional were in the top fifth in performance were about 20 ones. Many routine decisions that used to go up percentage points ahead of their peers. Eight years the chain of command are being decided much later, their lead had grown to 150 percentage points. lower in the hierarchy, to good effect. For example, The lesson: those who move earlier, faster, and more a financial information company saw that its decisively do best. traditional sources were losing their value as COVID-19 deepened. It formed a small team to Accelerate the transition to agility define company priorities—on a single sheet We define “agility” as the ability to reconfigure of paper—and come up with new kinds of data, strategy, structure, processes, people, and which it shared more often with its clients. The From thinking about the next normal to making it work: What to stop, start, and accelerate 85