“Agility is the present and the future”
EAE Business School hosted the presentation of the book “¡Sí a la agilidad!” (“Yes to agility!”) by the author Cristina González Manzano. The event took the form of a round table in which the panel discussed how agility is experienced in companies. The participants on the panel included Jane Rodríguez del Tronco, the Founder of The Bold Choice, who also introduced the event; Patricia Acosta Soler, the Sustainability and Digital Equality Manager at Orange; Adán Recuerdo, the Head of Agile Transformation at Másmovil; Eva Carmona de la Morena, the Director of Corporate Wellbeing at Leroy Merlin; and Juan Manuel Gómez Ramos, the CEO of Enciende la Luz.
Discussing what agility meant to them, Adán Recuerdo explained that “agility is more a matter of flexibility than of speed, because speed would really be a subproduct of it”. Moreover, Adán emphasized that “agility is also part of the culture, and the size of the company also affects how people experience agility within companies”.
Patricia Acosta then gave an overview of her experience of agility in her company, explaining that she had to work on this aspect when she was in a situation in which she needed to find fast responses to the problems that were arising. Patricia added that “we took a long time to go from having an idea to actually launching it onto the market. From that starting point, we began to strive to develop agility in our processes”.
Juanma Gómez discussed the impact of technology on implementing agility in processes in companies, as technology advances increasingly fast and the market has had to adapt.
Lastly, Eva Carmona de la Morena mentioned that, for her, agility means "fostering wellbeing in organizations", as she believes that it is crucial to place people at the heart of companies.
After the round table finished, Cristina González presented her book “¡Sí a la agilidad!”, saying that she came up with the idea because she gives “a lot of training on agility and I couldn’t find any easy, intuitive books to recommend. My goal was for the people who read it to understand what agility means in a simple way, as well as how to put it into practice”.
Cristina also explained that the aim of the book is for “everybody who likes the topic of agility to climb aboard the train and, once they grasp it, they are encouraged to put it into practice”.
The author ended the presentation by stressing the importance of training people in the field of agility because “it is the present and the future. Moreover, if we want to retain talent in our organizations and achieve greater efficiency and efficacy, it is vital that we change the way we think and work”.
Cristina is passionate about project management, team development and performance orientation. A few years ago, she became a certified Scrum Master and she liked it so much that she decided to continue training and specialize in the world of agility. She is a talent consultant, executive coach and agile expert. Her goal is to help people and organizations achieve their objectives, while enjoying the journey to get there.