Ask most people what agility means at work and they will reach for a framework. My team does Scrum. We run Kanban. We are scaling with SAFe. That is “Big A” Agility, and it matters. But it is not the thing that will decide whether your organization thrives over the next few years. The thing that will decide that is “little a” agility: the plain human capability to pivot, to change direction, and to make a decision without every piece of information in hand.
With Agile 2026 in Washington DC coming up at the end of July, and its theme of “Shaping the Future with Agility”, it is worth being clear about what we actually mean. Agility is not a delivery method reserved for software teams. It is a capability every leader needs, every team needs, and every organization needs. It belongs in the DNA of the company, right next to the values on the wall.
Big A and little a
Big A Agility is the toolbox: the ceremonies, the boards, the roles. Little a agility is the mindset underneath, the willingness to look at what you are doing and ask whether there is a better way. Lock into one tool, one process, one plan, and you lose it. The most expensive words in business are still “we have always done it this way”, because they quietly close the door on every better option that comes along.
From VUCA to VUCA 2.0
Back when we wrote the first leadership classes in 2015 and 2016, we taught VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It was a slightly abstract idea at the time. Then 2020 arrived and dropped everyone into a full VUCA environment overnight. What helps is the response that Bill George framed as VUCA 2.0.
- Meet volatility with vision, the long-term goal you hold steady.
- Meet uncertainty with understanding, by listening and asking for feedback.
- Meet complexity with courage, the willingness to make bold choices even when you are afraid.
- Meet ambiguity with adaptability. That last one is really agility, because vision, understanding, and courage only deliver if you can actually change direction.
Why it matters more now
The speed of change has climbed sharply, and so has the number of decisions each of us makes in a day. A generation ago people made a handful of choices between sunrise and sunset. Now some jobs are almost nothing but decisions, a constant stream of this or that, on or off, A or B, layered on top of a landscape of tools that grows every week. If you are not agile and adaptable in that environment, you either snap under the pressure or you go rigid, and rigidity is its own kind of danger.
Speed also changes what customers will accept. In a recent session with the Miro team, a room full of people answered a few questions and watched AI build a working prototype in about ten minutes. A few years ago that same result would have taken months of meetings, sign offs, and waiting for the one person who was out of office. Customers know this now. They want the app today, not in six to twelve months, because by then the world has moved on and five competitors have already shipped.
Experiment, and make it safe to fail
The engine underneath all of this is experimentation. In a recent PMI-ACP class we talked about keeping an experiment log: every experiment you want to try, up on a board, a couple in progress at a time, each one marked as a success or a failure so the learning stays visible. Teams should be able to answer how many experiments they ran last month, how many worked, and what they learned from the ones that did not. But none of that happens without psychological safety. If failure is not an option in your organization, experimentation is just a poster. Leaders have to go first, run the experiments themselves, and talk openly about the ones that failed, because that is what gives everyone else permission to try.
Grow the mindset, then let go
This is also a shift from a fixed mindset, I have my set of skills and that is that, to a growth mindset, I do not know how to do this yet, so let me go find out. Curiosity, a willingness to play with new tools, and comfort going back and forth through small experiments all sit on that foundation. And it asks something specific of leaders: let go of control. One or two people cannot carry every decision, so the power to decide has to move to the people doing the work. Command and control kills agility. Leaders who buy in, stay involved, and trust their teams are the ones who build it.
Stop predicting, start building
Which is why the five year plan has quietly died. I once watched a head of product show off Gantt charts stretching three and four years into the future, genuinely beautiful, and completely fictional the moment the pandemic hit and a two year item became the single most important thing in the company that day. By the time a plan like that is written and formatted, it is already out of date. At best you hold a goal for the year and revisit it every 90 days, asking what to pivot, how to get there, and whether the goal itself still makes sense.
What to take home
- There are two kinds of agility. Big A is the framework. Little a is the capability to change direction, and it belongs in every company’s DNA.
- Answer VUCA with VUCA 2.0. Meet volatility with vision, uncertainty with understanding, complexity with courage, and ambiguity with adaptability.
- Experiment on purpose. Keep an experiment log, run a few at a time, and treat failures as learning you can see.
- Psychological safety comes first. If it is not safe to fail, nothing else on this list survives.
- Let go of control. Push decisions to the people doing the work, because one or two people cannot carry them all.
- Stop predicting the future. Hold a goal for the year, revisit it every 90 days, and build teams that can thrive no matter what comes next.