An interview with Andres Ospina, Director of Human-Centered Design at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), a global financial institution.

In the global marketplace, the ability to be agile in the face of shifting market demands is necessary for business sustainability. Yet companies across industries and geographies struggle to adopt an Agile mindset. A recent McKinsey report shows just four percent of companies surveyed have successfully implemented an Agile transformation, despite the fact that three-quarters of respondents say organizational agility is a top priority.

As we discussed in our previous post, a common challenge organizations face with their innovation initiatives is getting the idea out in the world. Executives put out the mandate:

We need to be more innovative. We want great ideas. Innovation needs to be part of our core principles and everyday practice.

But even when great solutions are introduced to the organization, many remain best-kept secrets, failing to ever reach scale. More often than not, the problem is that the stakeholders who will make or break the idea’s execution aren’t ready, willing and able to support its success. They haven’t bought in to the change.

In my last blog, I talked about why there are no fast tracks to creating an innovative culture. If you want to change the way your people design products, make decisions, and build for the future, you have to change the way ideas are generated and supported at every step in your organization.