High Agency, the ability to act on one’s environment in order to create the desired outcomes, that element of action-oriented, decisive beings is something Africa Nxt Gen organisations must seek to create. The future of organizations in Africa is high agency. How to create high agency organizations?

And to do this, it requires a rethink to everything we know about leadership in African organizations. That starts with decentralization of decision making. The era of ‘the CEO knows it all’ is gone. Position now exists as a guide, an enabler. Leaders must now view themselves as enablers, as creators of high-performance environments.

High Agency starts with a clear vision. Leaders must set the vision clear and state to their people why they are doing what they are doing. Everyone in the organization should be clear about the direction of the organization and all effort must be directed towards that true north.

With vision clarity, leaders then must move out of the way and watch their people perform magic. Leaders must get comfortable with building an environment where their teams are allowed to make decisions, make mistakes and learn faster. In fact, leaders should be obsessed at the speed of learning. If organizations can learn faster, make faster decisions, iterate, then high agency becomes culture.

And high agency must be built at all levels of the organization. The least person in the organization must be clear about the decisions they need to take within their context. To create high agency, organizations will also have to kill compartmentalization, the future of organizations is cross-functional teams. Individuals from different departments or sections coming together to work on the business challenges.