If you truly commit to becoming indispensable to your customer you will find the right ways to align vision, culture and organizational design and establish the balance needed to flourish well into the future.

How do you become indispensable?

There’s certainly no simple formula to follow. However, there are five things we, at Indispensable Consulting, suggest that a leadership team insist upon, including:

• putting the client first,
• anticipating and solving problems before they become out of hand,
• providing honest feedback to your people and all of your stakeholders including customers,
• keeping all promises (stated and implied), and
• delivering more than was promised.

If you sculpt an organization out of cloth that is made from these five things, you will have built a company that is fully aligned and right-sized, one that will can withstand any challenge and stand the test of time.

Agility is about adaptability. If you want to respond quickly, you have to adjust and adapt. There are four elements of adaptability that we promote at Indispensable Consulting when discussing agility with our clients.

The first is Leadership Adaptability. Your leadership must understand the company’s strengths and weaknesses, knowing how it stacks-up against its competition in regard to its offerings, price and service delivery.

Team Adaptability is next. It’s here that staff must become comfortable in embracing new ways of thinking and doing.

The third element is Change Adaptability. Change adaptability is about culture. You need one that embraces complexity and is comfortable in continuously exploring new ways to get things done.

The need to train line management to maintain its composure in times of uncertainty and respond well under pressure comprises the fourth dimension of adaptability needed to become more agile. I call that Delivery Adaptability.

Interestingly, all four are centered on people and their preferred modes of thinking and behaving. If you want to be more agile, it starts with everyone working on being more adaptable. Once that’s established we can focus on untangling the way work is performed.

You can always ask your people!

Here are 5 straight-forward yes or no questions:

1. Are you delighted to work here?
2. Are you inspired to do your best for the Company?
3. Do you ever think about working anywhere else?
4. Do you consider that this Company is the best place for you to work?
5. Would you recommend the Company to a friend who’s looking for a job?

Scoring the results from this type of casual staff survey will speak volumes – Lots of agreement, and all is fine, continue doing what you’re doing; lots of divergence, you’ve got a problem, and it’s time for some changes.

On the flip-side, if you don’t change things and get the “right” people and unequivocally engage them, there’s no way you’re ever going to become indispensable.

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