The secret of nimble workplaces

When David Lord took over as president and chief executive officer of JumpStart Games Inc, he was astonished to learn that the maker of creative games for kids had a surprisingly rigid management style.

Straight away, Lord took action. He got rid of big company divisions, such as marketing and product development, and restructured them into smaller, more nimble teams. The teams were then encouraged to operate like entrepreneurial collectives, ready to adapt and change direction in response to new ideas.

The results were dramatic. In just a couple of years, the company, based in Torrance, California, grew to 250 people from 60. It went to producing five products from just one. And it picked up powerful new partners such as filmmaker Dreamworks Animation and the US National Football League.

The old corporate structure “was all top down, and it was all management driven,” Lord recalled. “We stopped being management driven and started being manager driven, where managers of small teams get to make decisions.”

That kind of agile workplace might sound unattainable for more traditional companies where decision-making happens in the boardroom. But there’s good news: Becoming nimble is within reach for those companies willing to make the necessary changes.

Nimbleness is a learned behaviour, according to Brigid Carroll, senior lecturer in leadership and organisational studies at the University of Auckland Business School in New Zealand. “Being nimble is not mental agility,” Carroll said. “Actually, how nimble you are is dictated by how well you relate to other people.”

What that means for managers is that they can teach their team to dream up and respond quickly to new ideas. It begins by breaking down old barriers and abandoning the processes that stymy creativity.

Most likely, Carroll said, you need to reinvent the process where new ideas are proposed. Ditch the boring, inefficient weekly staff meeting and turn it into a brainstorming session instead. Streamline the multi-step process of bringing ideas to top management by giving low-ranking employees access to decision makers and permission to open any manager’s door.

Next, make sure your staff is talking with people outside their specialty, whether that means employees in other departments or people in other companies.

Perhaps most importantly, Carroll emphasised, being more nimble might mean more misses than hits, but your employees need to know they won’t be punished when that happens. Instead, turn failure into a learning experience. And, crucially, make sure your employees know they will be rewarded when ideas work and when they get it right.

These changes might seem more achievable for small companies than large organisations. But there is still a way to be nimble even within bigger corporate entities, said Patrick T Murphy, professor at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business. If your company is stuck in a top-down culture and won’t adapt to a more horizontal approach, it’s time to break the rules.

“If something needs to be done and you as a manager need three approvals to get it done, do it anyway,” Murphy said. “You won’t be in trouble for skipping the process when you’re proven right.”

That might sound like a scary proposition, but Murphy said it’s often the mid-level managers willing to take risks who can save a company by generating ideas and bringing new products to market.

Lord experienced that at JumpStart, where he needed to rewrite the rules about risk assessment. The National Football League hired Lord’s company in early 2014 to produce several games, including two mobile phone apps, in a matter of months. The manager Lord assigned to the project came to him early in the development.

“She said, ‘OK, we need to change these parts of the process or we’re not going to make these dates,’” Lord recalled. So the company scrapped the old risk-assessment procedure, which involved managers producing a PowerPoint presentation to top executives. Instead, risk assessment is now handled by a spreadsheet with the risks and benefits weighed out and quickly shared with the management team.

The change worked: JumpStart delivered the two National Football League apps on time, along with a website and a game. The company also started using the process for its other products and helped JumpStart release the app School of Dragons for Dreamworks, which is now ranked as a top 10 mobile app.

“Putting out all these products in this short amount of time is a monumental task,” Lord said. “You just can’t do it if every decision made needs approval of a whole bunch of managers above you.”

The secret then is a horizontal management structure, and that’s a place where good ideas and new directions come naturally.