Why Agility Fails in Rigid Systems

In the nonprofit sector especially, that illusion has thinned. Funding landscapes change abruptly. Priorities are redefined midstream. Long-standing assumptions quietly expire. And alongside that instability comes pressure. The urge to respond. To fix. To act.

Sometimes the instinct is to restore a version of “normal.” More often, it is to make whatever this is now workable. Manageable. Survivable.

As our environments are increasingly described as brittle, anxious, non-linear, and difficult to interpret, we go looking for remedies. We are told that the way forward is agility. That we must learn to navigate uncertainty rather than resist it. That flexibility and speed will keep us afloat when the current refuses to follow a predictable direction.

Conceptually, this makes sense.

Organisationally, it becomes complicated.

Unless agility is already embedded in how decisions are made, how information flows, and how authority is distributed, trying to “become agile” can feel almost as destabilising as the uncertainty it is meant to address.

Still, we look around and see organisations that appear to thrive amid volatility. Startups. Tech firms. Teams that experiment quickly and iterate without paralysis. Naturally, we want to borrow what works. Agility begins to sound less like a philosophy and more like a solution.

There is relief in that. Uncertainty acquires a label. The label comes with frameworks. Frameworks come with steps. Becoming agile turns into the next item on the organisational to-do list. If we implement the right structures, surely things will improve.

But change rarely unfolds through declarations alone.

Organisational change, even when well-intentioned, does not succeed simply because it has been named. It cannot be installed from the top and sustained through language that outruns structural reality.

What often enters the organisation are methods rather than conditions. Tools rather than shifts in power. Sprints. Stand-ups. Retrospectives. New vocabulary. The deeper questions—about authority, trust, and risk—are postponed.

This is usually where friction begins.

When the responsibility for “becoming agile” falls on people who do not have the authority to redefine their work or determine what risks are acceptable, agility remains aspirational. Expectations expand. Decision-making power does not. The boundaries stretch slightly, but the walls stay firmly in place.

Experimentation, under these conditions, feels less like exploration and more like moving through a narrow corridor. There is room to manoeuvre—but only within limits that are not open to negotiation. Guardrails multiply. Documentation increases. Structure quietly reasserts itself, often in the name of accountability.

And for those without the authority to act, experimentation is gradually replaced by justification. Time once spent testing ideas is redirected toward building cases for approval. Small, reversible steps give way to carefully argued proposals. Documentation begins to stand in for learning.

The cost of agility, in this sense, is unevenly distributed.

Those who set expectations for flexibility are rarely the ones absorbing its emotional and cognitive weight. That burden sits lower in the hierarchy, with people asked to demonstrate adaptability inside systems that remain fundamentally rigid. What emerges is not transformation, but a modernised version of constraint.

This is where the distinction between doing agile and being agile starts to matter.

Agile as a collection of practices can be implemented relatively quickly. Agile as a mindset requires something slower and less visible. It depends on trust. On shared visibility. On a genuine willingness to distribute judgment.

Trying to do agile without becoming agile tends to produce performance rather than change.

For agility to function, people need to know they are permitted to try, to fail, and to adjust without disproportionate personal consequence. That does not mean the absence of oversight. It means recognising that risk and learning are organisational responsibilities—not individual liabilities.

Without that shift, the language evolves while the culture does not. Confusion is mistaken for experimentation. Reactivity is reframed as iteration. Anxiety increases rather than subsides.

Strategy often complicates this further.

In theory, strategy clarifies direction—purpose, values, priorities. In practice, it frequently collapses into a list of actions and tasks. When strategy becomes indistinguishable from execution, flexibility narrows. Rather than pursuing direction and adjusting course as needed, teams focus on executing perfectly defined steps—while assuming those steps still point somewhere meaningful.

Feedback rarely travels upward with the same clarity that goals cascade downward. Collaboration is encouraged, yet constrained by silos and limited visibility. Individuals are asked to “manage up” and show initiative, even when the system leaves little room for genuine influence.

There is a paradox here.

Many organisations want adaptability without relinquishing control. They seek responsiveness while maintaining centralised authority. In doing so, they relocate the discomfort of uncertainty onto individuals rather than addressing it as a systemic condition.

Perhaps this is why we are so quick to reach for ready-made solutions.

Discomfort creates urgency.
Urgency favours imitation.

If someone else appears to have figured it out, borrowing their methods feels safer than sitting with ambiguity long enough to examine our own structural constraints. Yet without that pause, agility risks becoming another slogan—less a response to uncertainty than a way of soothing it.

Before adopting new frameworks or declaring a new way of working, it may be worth asking quieter questions.

What currently works, even if imperfectly?
Where does decision-making actually reside?
What risks are people truly allowed to take?

It may turn out that the issue is not a lack of flexibility at all, but a lack of trust. A lack of visibility. A lack of shared understanding.

No method compensates for that.

Agility cannot be willed into existence.

It develops gradually, through attention to structure, power, and purpose. It requires the patience we once assumed the world itself possessed. And without that groundwork, attempts to move faster often reinforce the very rigidity they were meant to dissolve.