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The Agile C-Suite

Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez | page 090 

If a company wants to be fast on its feet, transform end-to-end customer experiences, and continuously outpace competitors, it needs more than lots of agile teams. A truly agile enterprise re­quires that the company’s top officers—most, if not all, of the C-suite—embrace agile principles, too. 

In this article the authors describe how such an agile leader­ship team functions, how it differs from the conventional corporate-style executive committee and from other agile teams, and what agile means for senior executives’ day-to-day work lives. 

The job of a conventional agile team is to create innovative solutions to a problem—be it the need for a new product or service, a better business process, or an advanced technology to support new offerings. The job of an agile leadership team is to strike the right balance between standardizing operations and pursuing innovation.

Most agile team members dedicate virtually all of their time to their agile roles, but that’s not possible for executives. They have to simultaneously build and run the agile enterprise operating system, oversee business units and functions, serve as mentors and decision makers, and handle the crises of the moment.

HBR Reprint R2003C

Begin with Trust

Frances Frei and Anne Morriss | page 110

Trust is the basis for almost everything we do. It’s the foundation on which our laws and contracts are built. It’s the reason we’re willing to exchange our hard-earned paychecks for goods and services, to pledge our lives to another person in marriage, and to cast a ballot for someone who will represent our interests. It’s also the input that makes it possible for leaders to create the conditions for employees to fully realize their own capacity and power. 

So how do you build up stores of this essential leadership capital? By focusing, the authors argue, on the three core drivers of trust: authenticity, logic, and empathy. People tend to trust you when they think they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgment and competence (logic), and when they believe that you care about them (empathy). When trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these three drivers.

This article explains how leaders can identify their weak­nesses and strengths on these three dimensions and offers advice on how all three can be developed in the service of a truly empowering leadership style.

HBR Reprint R2003H

Marketing Meets Mission

Myriam Sidibe | page 120

A lot of global health problems can be prevented by persuading people to alter their behavior—something marketers excel at. That’s why brands have a critical role to play in tackling these challenges, says Sidibe, Unilever’s first social mission director. In this article she offers any brand that wants to achieve a social purpose a five-part framework for success: inspiring individuals to change behavior; winning internal backing; measuring performance at multiple levels; partnering with governments, NGOs, and other firms; and sparking a broader movement. This approach has allowed Unilever’s Lifebuoy and Knorr brands to make great strides in reducing disease and poor nutrition in the developing world, while enhancing their profiles and their growth, and it could help other brands, like Carling Black Label beer, which has taken on the task of combating domestic violence.

HBR Reprint R2003K