Leading for agility: Key behaviors of an agile-minded internal audit leader

04-05-2021

Being more agile-minded will help you capitalize on the collective skill and capabilities of your department – and help you become a better leader. 

Based on the experiences of coaching internal audit executive and leadership teams over many years, this brief article explains the mindset and behaviors of a truly agile-minded leader.

#1. Agile-minded IA leaders build rapid feedback loops

The myth: Our world, business and organization are predictable. For those with this mindset, everything can be planned in advance, cause and effect is known, and it’s unwise to deviate from the plan once made.

The reality: Our environment contains a lot of complexity. Full of unknowns and unpredictability, cause and effect is often random and unpredictable. Rather than predict the unpredictable, agile leaders build rapid feedback loops.

Agile-minded leaders actively practice and promote:

Rapid feedback loops

To deal with unknowns and complexity, we need to be responsive to change and course correct. Agile-minded leaders make this real by building and incorporating rapid feedback loops. It’s more than regular engagement and collaboration; think of it as a repeatable loop.

Do some work, pause:

  1. We’ve done this <share>
  2. We’ve learned this <share>
  3. Therefore, based on one and two above, this is what’s next <share>

Repeat

Undertaking work in cycles helps enable rapid feedback loops. For example, working to a monthly update or refresh on the department’s audit plan, or audit delivery teams working in timeboxed iterations (Sprints). You’ll see this throughout my examples below.

Read more, go to the article Leading for agility: Key behaviors of an agile-minded internal audit leader

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