Looking forward, looking back with BVSSH

27 November 2025 · business-agility, meetup, bvssh

Year-end joint Melbourne Business Agility and BVSSH meetup

A big thank you to everyone who attended and helped make the year-end joint Melbourne Business Agility and BVSSH Pacific meetup a success.

The event surfaced globally relevant key findings from the 2025 Business Agility Report, and Asia-Pacific-focused reflection on how those trends are resonating with our practitioner community — and what that means for 2026.

It was a pleasure to co-present with Maria Muir. Borrowing from and extending her summary:

Progress under pressure

Globally, business agility trends dipped slightly compared to 2024. Yet the long-term trend continues upward. APAC remains below the global average — driven by leaders favouring local optimisations, and a level of governance that still outweighs risk. Read more on the 2025 Business Agility Report here.

Across our communities, when faced with adverse conditions, leaders and teams are doubling down on what they can control. Enterprise-wide change remains hard — particularly in core processes like annual planning, funding models, and right-sizing governance.

Four key patterns in 2025

Customer centricity remains an aspiration. Many companies find that their own processes impede improving execution.

Leaders lean into their span of control. Reacting to constraints, leaders are becoming more directive as teams are given empowerment without accountability.

Value insights are not yet translating into timely action.

AI and technology simplify processes, but productivity gains have been modest — generally well away from 10× aspirations.

AI as a litmus test for real business agility

AI is exposing where our systems of work hold us back. Technology is no longer the constraint — our operating models are. A company is only as agile as its least agile part; those with right-sized governance frameworks and well-established delegation of decision rights are integrating AI into workflows and innovation faster and more safely than others.

Benefits are real, and they compound

In 2025, organisations reported an average 10.8% increase in revenue per employee, and 86% realised tangible benefits from business agility. The journey is multi-year; benefits accelerate year on year.

Takeaways

We have the answers to solve the big impediments from strategy to execution. We need to take action to embed sustainable change.
AI is an amplifier of human effort. Bigger benefits come to those with strong, deliberate systems of work.
Set yourself up for a strong 2026: enable flow with right-sized governance, planning processes that let you reallocate funding to execute on opportunities as they arise, and empowered leaders who are accountable for their outcomes.

Thanks

Thank you to the BVSSH team and particularly Jennifer Ryan for coordinating the hybrid interactions, Lisa Rosenberg in Sydney, Cara Talbot and Abdulla Shaik in Auckland, TeamForm in Melbourne, and the Business Agility Institute for its tireless research.