What got you here won’t get you there
For years, building a high-performance culture has been the ultimate business credential.
It has historically driven better customer satisfaction, higher revenue, tighter operations, and stronger margins.
Emphasis on a performance-based culture alone assumes conditions stay relatively stable, but businesses have been operating in an environment of sustained disruption since 2020. That pressure isn’t easing, and the cracks are showing—some once-stable organizations have crumbled.
Few organizations are prepared to evolve their performance strategies at a rate that keeps pace with change. But that level of agility is now a necessity. Our research proves it.
Agile organizations outperform rigid organizations | By the numbers
Highly agile organizations have responded well to market shifts and economic disruption. We surveyed 517 leaders, asking them questions that rated their operational agility and comparing their scores against reported performance metrics and KPIs.
We measured agility across three major domains
Operational agility
An organization’s ability to rapidly respond to internal and external changes by efficiently resolving problems, acting on feedback, and reallocating resources. It reflects how quickly and effectively teams can adapt operations to maintain performance and service quality in dynamic conditions.
(i.e., time to resolve problems, time to act on feedback, time to shift resources)
Talent acquisition and retention strategy
Practices and frameworks organizations use to attract, develop, and retain skilled talent. It includes capabilities like scalable hiring processes, targeted training and development programs, and strategies to match evolving business needs with relevant skills in the labor market.
(i.e., training and development, ability to scale, ability to find relevant skills)
Culture of innovation and integrated solutions
An organizational environment that encourages cross-functional collaboration, continuous improvement, and the proactive adoption of new technologies and processes. It focuses on minimizing siloed thinking and promoting frequent updates to tools, systems, and workflows to stay competitive.
(i.e., siloing, frequency of updating technology and work procedures)
We then compared the business outcomes of organizations that scored high on agility against those that scored low on agility to identify any patterns
1. For a deeper dive into all of the organizational outcomes we tested, see Appendix.
We measured business outcomes in terms of revenue trends, disruptive events (i.e., layoffs, mergers, etc.), NPS, and other key performance indicators.1 The results spoke for themselves.
These findings underscore a critical reality: Agility isn’t just a cultural or operational idea—it’s a measurable competitive advantage.
High-agility organizations consistently demonstrated stronger revenue growth, faster time to market, and higher employee engagement, proving that adaptability translates directly into performance.
The performance-agility gap
The over-indexing on performance is apparent when comparing the average performance and agility scores.
In addition to measuring agility, we also measured the manifestation of high-performance culture in respondent organizations. We defined high-performance cultures as having high levels of role clarity, continuous development, strong leadership, customer success, and other key employee performance elements.2
Organizations have focused on performance optimization by driving output, increasing margins, and improving short-term efficiency. High-performance culture creates results when conditions are stable, but it fails when circumstances require speed, flexibility, or coordination.
Average performance score
Average agility score
Plotting the data reveals that many organizations that have successfully built a high-performance culture are relatively rigid.
2. For a more detailed breakdown of how we evaluated high-performance cultures, see Appendix.
Performance vs. agility
The agility deficit shows up in several key areas
56% of organizations can’t move teams to a new initiative within 3 weeks.
That number climbs to 73% for enterprise companies.
Only 30% of organizations would describe their leadership team as aligned and responsive.
Among enterprise companies, it drops to 18%.
Only 45% of organizations are confident they can quickly find the right skills when new opportunities emerge.
In enterprise organizations, it’s just 31%.
53% of organizations are either at or behind the curve in their industry.
Rigid processes, siloed teams, and slow decision cycles don’t break overnight. They erode performance from the inside. These organizations are particularly vulnerable to market shifts, as they may struggle to redirect resources and personnel to meet emerging needs.
Organizations with an agility gap feel it in their outcomes.
When we compared highly agile high-performing organizations to rigid high-performing organizations, we found highly agile high-performing organizations are:
more likely to have talent strategies aligned with their business strategies.
more likely to have technology aligned with business strategy.
more likely to have execution aligned with business strategy.
more likely to be profitable in 2025.
more likely to have talent with an optimistic view of their organization’s outlook.
High-performance culture has hit a ceiling
Organizations optimizing for efficiency are seeing diminishing returns as they tighten processes and technology. Like a precisely tuned engine, these organizations become delicate, liable to spin out of alignment when they encounter rough terrain.
Overfocusing creates an illusion of control and strips out the capacity to adjust under pressure. When disruption inevitably hits, these companies respond slowly. Strategy locks up. Talent leaves. Leaders look for playbooks that no longer apply. And the systems that once delivered results become the very thing that prevents adaptation.
Investing in agility closes that gap. It enables teams to move, adjust, collaborate, and deliver without waiting for permission or stability. Without it, performance becomes a short-term metric—and a long-term risk.
