By Anant Patel
Business agility is not simply about reacting faster. It is about making better-informed decisions quickly while retaining the discipline to stay the course when appropriate.
Geopolitical instability, macroeconomic volatility and the proliferation of AI are posing wide-ranging challenges to companies around the world. Against this backdrop, agility has become an increasingly important business capability. But agility should not be confused with speed or constant change. Anant Patel, Partner and Head of Advisory at GHJ, a member of the HLB global network, argues that true agility is better understood as “disciplined responsiveness”: the ability to recognise change, understand its implications and act decisively without losing sight of longer-term strategic objectives.
Agility is one of the most overused words in business. Many organisations strive – or claim – to be agile in their operations, strategy and leadership.
The problem is that agility is often equated simply with speed: moving faster, reacting sooner or pivoting quickly when circumstances change. But speed alone is not agility. In fact, reacting quickly without the right information or strategic context can destroy value rather than create it.
For me, agility is fundamentally about being able to respond to changing circumstances without – crucially – losing sight of longer-term strategic objectives. It is not knee-jerk or impulsive; it is grounded in data, systems and processes. I think of it as “disciplined responsiveness”: seeing change early enough, understanding what it means and retaining the flexibility to act.
And in 2026, that has become particularly valuable.
Volatility and instability
The past two years have been defined by pronounced volatility. Geopolitical instability is reshaping international trade, supply chains and investment decisions. Interest-rate shifts and tighter capital markets have changed how businesses approach financing and transactions. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) is creating opportunities to improve productivity and transform operations, but also raising difficult questions about implementation, governance and workflows.
Businesses have been forced to respond to these challenges in tandem, rather than merely navigating one single issue. Indeed, a change in trade policy might affect supply costs, which influences margins, financing requirements and ultimately investment decisions.
For business leaders, the challenge is therefore not simply to respond quickly. It is to understand the wider implications of change, identify the available options and make informed decisions before circumstances dictate their next move.
This is where genuine agility becomes valuable. The objective is not simply to move faster, but to preserve optionality and make better decisions faster.
In my experience, genuinely agile businesses tend to have four capabilities in common: strategic optionality, financial visibility, disciplined technology adoption and access to expertise.
Build the capacity to change direction
One of the clearest demonstrations of agility comes when a business needs to reconsider a major strategic decision.
Let’s take the example of a company preparing for a sale. Its owners have secured an attractive (or, at least, agreeable) valuation, appointed advisers and begun preparing for a transaction. However, as market conditions change, financing becomes more difficult, buyers grow cautious and due diligence becomes increasingly demanding.
An inflexible business might press ahead regardless, reluctant to abandon a plan into which it has already invested significant time and money. In contrast, an agile business recognises that delaying the transaction could ultimately deliver greater value.
We encountered precisely this situation recently. As market conditions evolved, it became apparent that rushing into the process would not maximise the business’ value. So, the priority changed. Rather than asking how quickly the business could be brought to market, we examined how it could become a more attractive acquisition target over the following 12 to 24 months.
This meant reviewing the quality of earnings, recurring revenue, customer concentration, margin trends and management reporting. As a result, we developed a much clearer roadmap for creating value, rather than simply completing a transaction checklist.
In this instance, agility did not mean executing the transaction faster. It meant having the confidence to stop. Instead of optimising for speed to market, the owners began optimising for enterprise value.
This lesson extends beyond mergers and acquisitions. Whether entering a new market, launching a product or making a significant investment, leaders should establish clear conditions under which they would accelerate, delay or reconsider their plans.
One of the most practical ways leaders can improve agility is to make certain decisions before they need to make them.
- What level of margin compression would trigger action?
- What degree of customer concentration would change the company’s risk appetite?
- What financing conditions would cause management to postpone an acquisition or investment?
Establishing these decision points in advance allows management to respond with discipline rather than debating its criteria after circumstances have already changed. That level of preparation and, in turn, confidence underpins a business’ agility.
Make financial visibility a strategic priority
This example also highlights the importance of reliable information; businesses cannot adapt to changing circumstances without it.
Financial visibility is particularly important. For instance, your company might be generating healthy revenues while simultaneously experiencing deteriorating margins due to rising operational expenditure.
If this issue is only uncovered retrospectively through quarterly reporting, the options available to a management team become more limited.
Put simply, a business cannot be operationally agile if its financial information is historically accurate but strategically late.
This is why we prioritise financial reporting that provides businesses with information needed to make forward-looking decisions. For example, rather than relying exclusively on annual budgets, companies can introduce rolling cash-flow forecasts and regularly model different scenarios:
- What happens if a major customer delays payment by 60 days?
- How would a 10% increase in supply chain costs affect profitability?
There is an important progression here. Reporting tells management what happened. Forecasting helps identify what is likely to happen. Scenario planning asks what the business will do if it happens. An agile finance function needs to support all three.
This can be particularly relevant to growing middle-market businesses, where operational complexity often increases faster than internal finance capabilities. We regularly see businesses whose finance functions have struggled to keep pace with their expansion – while they may not yet require a full-time CFO, they do need stronger forecasting, management information, controls and financial leadership.
Ultimately, agility depends as much on having accurate, timely information as it does on leadership instinct. Businesses should ask whether they have the systems and personnel in place to deliver that information early enough for management to act on it.
Can AI make a business more agile?
AI is creating a new test of organisational agility. The temptation is to equate rapid adoption with progress, but implementing technology quickly is not the same as creating business value.
Without rushing to buy into AI hype, businesses ought to identify specific problems and consider whether AI can provide a solution that delivers a measurable commercial outcome.
Let’s return to the issue of slow financial reporting and how this leaves a company on the backfoot in its decision making. A company in this position could explore how AI and automation could reduce manual reconciliation work or identify changes in margins, working capital, customer profitability or cash flow more quickly.
For me, one of AI’s greatest potential contributions to business agility is not simply reducing costs or automating tasks. It is shortening the distance between an event occurring, management understanding its implications and the business taking action.
Whatever the use case, the starting point should be a measurable commercial goal, not the technology itself. Leaders should establish what success would look like before committing significant resources, with small-scale pilots then used to test their assumptions before any wider implementation.
Equally, businesses must assess whether their existing data, processes and governance are sufficiently robust to support the technology.
Over the past two years it has become clear to me that the most agile businesses are not necessarily those adopting AI the fastest, but rather those making the most astute decisions as to where it can add value – and in many cases, that value looks like faster, better-informed decision-making, which is foundational to being more agile.
Build an ecosystem before you need it
Agility does not require a business to possess every capability internally. It requires leaders to know where they can access the right expertise quickly when circumstances demand it.
Consider a United States company expanding into Asia-Pacific. The opportunity might be commercially attractive, but the business must also consider local taxation, regulatory requirements, employment arrangements, financing structures and potentially changing tariffs.
These issues cannot always be resolved independently. A decision about market entry might have implications for the company’s wider financial structure, supply chain and operational model.
This is where the right advisory ecosystem becomes important. Businesses need accountants, consultants, legal advisers and other specialists who understand not only their individual disciplines but also the organisation’s broader commercial objectives. The issues can then be considered collectively rather than in isolation.
This is particularly important for middle-market companies. Maintaining every specialist capability internally may be neither practical nor economical. But building trusted relationships before those capabilities are urgently needed gives management the ability to access expertise quickly when opportunities or challenges emerge.
A combination of responsiveness, commercial judgement and specialist expertise is hugely important in making businesses more agile.
The broader lesson is that agility comes from preparedness. Companies need timely information, strategic options, appropriate technology and access to expertise before circumstances force them to act.
Conclusion
Uncertainty is not going away. Leaders cannot predict the next geopolitical disruption, tariff change, technology breakthrough or shift in capital markets. What they can control is how prepared their organisations are to respond.
That requires financial visibility, clear decision criteria, disciplined technology investment and access to the right expertise before it is urgently needed.
The most agile companies will not necessarily be those that change direction every time circumstances change. They will be those that see change earlier, understand its implications faster and retain the flexibility to act.
That is why I believe agility is best understood as disciplined responsiveness: knowing when to accelerate, when to adapt, when to stop and, just as importantly, when to stay the course.
About the Author
Anant Patel is a Partner and Head of Advisory at GHJ, a Los Angeles-headquartered accounting and advisory firm and independent member of HLB International. With more than 30 years of experience, Anant advises middle-market businesses on growth, M&A, financial performance and strategic transformation, helping management teams navigate complex transactions and periods of significant change.
