CIA agent turned entrepreneur Rupa Patel has navigated war zones, military briefing rooms, and corporate boardrooms in an all-action career.

Fresh from the White House, we were delighted she could join us at our recent leadership gathering to give her in insight into agile leadership.

And who better to do that than someone who has advised US Generals, seen her trailblazing work incorporated into numerous MBA programmes, released an international best-seller, and been recognised as a 'power woman' by Harper's Bazaar Magazine?

Staying alive to possibilities

As Rupal put it, “staying aware and alive to different possibilities and different areas” has played a huge role in her career. From her time in the CIA, starting a business in a previously unknown sector, putting pen to paper to write a book, it’s all come with high degrees of unpredictability.

She pointed out that “uncertainty” and “curveballs” have come into sharper focus for us all in recent years but that “agility is timeless and something we all need to master to avoid going totally crazy”.

For Rupal being an agile leader is “having the ability to change your behaviour and how you respond effectively to whatever the changing circumstances are”.

Those changes could be internal, like outgrowing a client or changes in your team, or external, like a shift in your sector or the market. Whether internal or external, agility requires us to be constantly on the lookout for these changes.

Five ways we can become more agile leaders

Drawing on her experience Rupal outlined five ways we can all learn to be more agile and respond to changing circumstances. And it came with a nice memorable, 80’s inspired, mnemonic: ICE ICE (baby) ...

1) Intentional Constraints

It might sound counterintuitive, but constraints can make us more agile. These can be self-imposed or external. Dr Zeus for example put a 50-word limit on all his books – and it made his creativity more focused.

In the CIA Rupal described how the thousands of analysts operated in a think tank culture where it was impossible to look at every piece of data in microscopic detail. Instead they developed an instinct for taking the biggest impact ideas and figuring out the possibilities. Their ‘Red Teams’ would operate under the toughest constraints and looked at the worst-case scenario and how that would play out.

By creating constructs and boundaries we can cut out the noise and make better decisions. When you’re up against it might seem like a luxury to enforce constraints but experimenting with techniques like these can help you and your team to operate with more agility.

2) Exposure

Agility also comes from exposure. Through training, experience, and broadening our expertise we start to develop better instincts and a sixth sense about how to respond effectively to totally new scenarios. It’s something we all do subconsciously but should look to do consciously.

Before Rupal was deployed into a hostile environment or warzone there was a period of intense training including scenarios like being kidnapped or having to shoot her way out of kill boxes. And that exposure to unpredictability enabled her to see the subtle signs and shifts in the bushes when it really mattered.

Think about the exposure you can get that will equip you to better rely on your instincts. And after you’ve experienced it, do an after-action review to dissect what went well and why, try to embed the learnings in your organisation then agility can grow and live on without you.

3) Intuition

Don't dismiss your intuition or take it for granted. It's important and you can work to make it more powerful. We all get gut feelings, and you can be more in tune with and learn to trust them by practicing meditation, reflection, and visualisation.

It helps high performers in all kinds of fields be better – from Olympic swimmers to CEO's of billion-dollar companies. Rupal reminded us of Arnie “the Governator” Schwarzenegger’s love of visualisation and the power of seeing the future you want to create and to start living it. Ask yourself: Am I on the right path? What's in my way? How do I work towards it?

4) Curiosity

For Rupal “Curiosity is one of the core skills we often don't spend as much time on”. But it’s the difference between “knowing it all and growing it all”. We're all specialists but to be agile and respond quickly and relevantly you have to be willing to grow.

Whether it’s engaging with peers or communities, arming yourself with new skills, or just adopting new ways of thinking – do all you can to learn from new industries, people, and organisations.

And when it comes to tackling a new problem don’t rely on past thinking, explore how you can approach it, ask yourself open-ended questions, give yourself the chance to be curious and agile.

5) Experimentation

As leaders we can feel like we’re supposed to have all the answers, but no-one does everything right first time and there are no ‘perfect’ decisions.

Rupal encouraged us to take the pressure off and see what happens, “if you don't know which way to turn go left for a bit and see how it goes, veer back if you need to – most decisions can be reversed.”

But do this with a fail-fast mentality. Focus on mini experiments that test new ways of operating that won’t use up too many resources.

Start small to build big

Like most things that make us better leaders and our businesses more successful, agility takes a bit of work. Rupal invited us all to first just choose one of the five ways to become more agile and experiment with it. Think of one way you can implement it to move forward through whatever uncertainty you’re working with at the moment, capture the journey and then reflect on it. Using these reflections then try to extract lessons and embed them in your ways of working and your organisation to be better prepared for challenges and opportunities ahead.

Rupal closed with some great wisdom from her dad: “Knowledge to have and action to lack is like putting a pile of books on ass's back”. Wise words to add to the big bank of wisdom that we all took from Rupal’s keynote.

If you want to know more about Rupal’s journey from CIA to CEO, check out her bestselling book: https://www.ciatoceo.com/