Advancing change agility in healthcare

Agility has been adopted in the software development industry for decades and has been used in the business world for the past 10 years. In healthcare, however, agility has not been widely adopted or studied but is emerging as imperative for competitive advantage in a rapidly changing environment. Human-centred agility and change in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has become especially important. Change agility is composed of two aspects. While the first aspect is a mindset that embraces change, resiliency, flexibility and responsiveness to consumer needs, the second is an approach using collaborative efforts through self-organising teams. Healthcare organisations must adopt both aspects to leverage the collective value of change agility. To help staff embrace and develop a change agility mindset, healthcare organisations need to offer relevant educational courses and coaching; teach change agility principles and values by using case studies and real-life applications; and promote the right culture by building flexible systems, providing a safe learning environment and encouraging risk-taking. To grow and sustain change agility, healthcare organisations can benefit by using a continuous seven-step quest: examining the current state, defining the future state, assessing the gaps, developing strategies, executing the strategies, measuring progress and maintaining success. This paper addresses the strategy and iterative interventions developed by the Department of Management Engineering and Consulting (renamed the Strategy Department) at Mayo Clinic to prepare its professional staff to drive a business-focused, change agility mindset through benchmarking, education and experiential learning. The early experiences and lessons learned at Mayo Clinic in change agility are likely broadly transferable to other healthcare organisations.