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Business Flexibility Business flexibility is defined as the kinds of flexibility found in a professional business setting.

When is improving business flexibility useful to an organisation? If the future environment is uncertain, if there is a need for scalability (to grow or downsize). Or if there is a need to change the business model. Like any need, investing in the means, well in advance, will make responding to that need easier.

One example of a type of business flexibility is Plan Flexibility which involves developing several, high level plans. And then investing in flexibility, to increase the chances of achieving any of them.

Options Flexibility involves having one over-arching plan, with significant flexibility on the tactics. One example is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation approach to Malaria eradication (by all means necessary).

Time Flexibility includes a plan achievable at multiple speeds. Tactical use of time might include; playing for time, buying time or re-inventing time. An example of buying time might be a research team renegotiating some deadlines or outputs, in order to follow up on promising side-track opportunities. Three examples of re-inventing time are; (1) Reverse mentoring e.g. young IT-savvy workers mentoring older workers who have different skills. (2) Exploiting selective memory of history to sell products or services e.g. a company marketing nostalgic/vintage/retro products rather than new ones. (3) Forcing the pace/bringing forward a deadline e.g. a political party calling an early election. Or a company running a 50% sale to bring forward future sales.

In the workplace, it's possible to invest Options, Plan and Time flexibility concurrently.

Style flexibility is about being flexible on appearance, status or delivery process, where the core identity does not change. Some examples are as follows: Unisex office facilities. General purpose meeting rooms or classrooms. Cars with a choice of colour, manual/automatic or convertible/hard top. A hermit crab selecting a bigger shell when it grows bigger. A translation service translating one message into multiple languages, without loss of meaning. Colour change as exhibited by creatures such as the chameleon and octopus, when they sense danger. Human blood groups. The human brain’s ability to change emotions and attach feelings to memories. People’s ability to express emotions. An organisations’ ability to relate to its customers or beneficiaries.

Substance flexibility is about creating versatility of the core identity, without varying the style. Some examples as follows: The swiss army knife design. An amphibious vehicle. Highly versatile travel clothing (less is more). Different bus routes & timetables. A professional services firm offering a wide range of services, at client-defined lengths of assignment. The body’s immune system in fighting off disease & healing cuts. The human brain’s ability to reason, imagine, rationalise & recall memories. People who can speak multiple (coding) languages. Staff at a school who can manage and teach. An organisation having a range of sanctions for a policy breach. Replacement of a once yearly, operating budget with quarterly updated, rolling annual budgets, to cope with rapid changes.

Some things exhibiting both style and substance flexibility together are as follows: Buildings in a street, or on a university campus. A credit card or mobile phone.

14 flexitypes (types of buiness flexibility) that an organisation can systematically look at improving are as follows: Communications flexibility, Design flexibility, Resource flexibility, Process flexibility, Systems flexibility, Service flexibility, Product flexibility, Channel flexibility, Project flexibility, Supplier flexibility, Contract flexibility, Management flexibility, Business model flexibility and Stakeholder flexibility.