Building Agility Into Strategy

Pivot on Curiosity, Culture, and Core Competencies

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that certainty is overrated. 

Tariffs can appear seemingly overnight. Supply chains can seize up. New competitors emerge from industries you didn’t even know existed. In a world this unpredictable, the traditional idea of strategy as long-term plans carved in stone just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Today, strategy is less about predicting the future and more about preparing your organization to adapt to it. It’s about building agility into the way you think, operate, and lead.

When I think about what’s helped WhiteWater and our clients thrive through perpetual change, I see three key enablers that separate agile organizations from the rest: curiosity, culture, and core competencies.

1. Curiosity: Relaxing your assumptions.

Agility starts with curiosity: the willingness to challenge what you think you know. 

One of my clients recently faced a dilemma. They manufacture a specialized product that moves back and forth across the border during production. Tariffs hit them both ways, importing the unfinished material and exporting the finished product. Ouch. Margins evaporated overnight.

Most leaders, faced with that kind of problem, ask, “What should we do?” It’s a natural question, but it’s a convergent one, narrowing thinking to a few select options or even a single correct answer.

Curious leaders come at it differently, with an altogether different question: “What could we do?”

Could we move manufacturing closer to our end market? Could we rethink our supply chain? Could our capabilities apply to an entirely different customer base or sector?

That subtle shift from “should” to “could” opens up possibilities that rigid thinking shuts down.

It’s the same mindset that allowed Captain “Sully” Sullenberger to land a disabled jet on the Hudson River. In those 200 seconds of crisis, he didn’t panic or fixate on the expected answer (getting back to the airport). He paused and asked, What are my options? That’s curiosity in action under pressure.

Curiosity also requires humility. As leaders, we can get attached to our own experience, what worked before, what’s familiar. The more certain we are, the less space there is for learning. Agile strategy demands the opposite: relaxing assumptions, staying open, and continuously asking, What else is possible?

2. Culture: Creating safety for agility.

Curiosity can’t survive in a fear-based culture.

Agility requires an environment where people can question, test, and occasionally fail without fear of punishment. That takes trust: trust that leaders will listen, that experimentation won’t be career-ending, and that people’s contributions matter even when ideas don’t pan out.

I often say agility is a team sport. You can have the best strategic insight in the world, but if your people aren’t connected, engaged, and empowered, you can’t pivot fast enough when conditions change.

We’ve seen this play out in companies undergoing large-scale change. Implementing a new system or structure often meets resistance from long-tenured employees who “know how things have always been done.” They’re uncomfortable, not because they dislike progress, but because they’ve lost their footing in familiar territory.

Contrast that with a new hire who’s never seen the old way. They learn the new system, no problem. Why? Because they don’t have years of assumptions to unlearn.

That’s the cultural muscle we need to build: flexibility. Just like physical flexibility, it atrophies without use. Organizations that stay agile practice it by encouraging learning, welcoming fresh perspectives, and making space for discomfort.

When leaders show care for their teams by truly listening, communicating openly, and involving them in decision-making, they create the trust needed for agility. People move faster and more confidently when they know leadership has their back.

3. Core Competencies: Doing different things. 

When uncertainty is high, it’s tempting to hunker down and protect what you know. But the most agile organizations look at their core competencies, the things they do uniquely well, and ask how those could be applied in new ways.

I work with a client that fabricates steel for large retail buildings. Their team saw themselves strictly as a truss manufacturer. But their true competency wasn’t making trusses. It was fabricating steel with precision and reliability, a high-value capability with countless other applications.

Similarly, another company I know built a niche product that involved high-grade insulation technology. When their core market contracted, they didn’t shut down. They asked, “Where else could this technology add value?” That led to new lines of business that looked different but drew on the same strengths.

Agility isn’t about reinventing who you are every six months. It’s about knowing your DNA and being willing to express it differently as opportunities change.

Even here at WhiteWater, our roots are in organizational alignment, helping leaders pull every lever in sync to achieve results. But when a client needed to engage their people in a new way, we stretched that core competency into a different format: gamified learning. It wasn’t about changing who we are (we are NOT a gaming company!); it was about applying what we do best in a new way that met our client’s needs.

That’s agility in action.

Bringing It All Together: Building an Agile Strategy that Lasts

When the ground shifts beneath you, whether due to changing markets, technology, or customer expectations, your best defence isn’t a thicker strategy binder. It’s a culture and mindset built for movement: 

• Curiosity keeps you open to new possibilities.

• Culture provides the safety and trust to act on them.

• And a clear understanding of your core competencies gives you the foundation to pivot without losing your footing.

Remember, agile strategy isn’t about reacting faster; it’s about thinking differently. It’s about replacing rigidity with readiness, prediction with preparation, and control with curiosity.

We know that the future can always surprise us. The question is: Will we be ready to adapt when it does?