The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) has become a popular approach for scaling agile practices across large enterprises. As organizations adopt SAFe, many are also looking to leverage principles from the growing field of Enterprise Agility to empower their SAFe implementation. Enterprise Agility provides holistic models and frameworks to help companies thrive in today's world of exponentially accelerating change.

In our experience empowering numerous SAFe rollouts, we've found several ways that Enterprise Agility concepts can strengthen a SAFe approach:

First, introducing components like the TriValue Company model creates a broader perspective beyond customer-centricity. The TriValue model ensures you optimize not just for customer value, but also company value and workforce wellbeing value. This helps avoid tradeoffs and unintended consequences that can undermine change efforts. With TriValue, you keep all three forms of value synchronized, which is critical for succeeding in turbulent times.

Second, Enterprise Agility emphasizes frameworks like Future Thinking to actively scan for emerging opportunities and get ahead of change, rather than just reacting. This future-readiness helps organizations preempt disruption. In a recent client case, we used Future Thinking to recognize an adjacent market that soon became a new source of growth.

Third, Enterprise Agility focuses extensively on the human elements of change through models like the Neuroscience of Change, Universal Agreements, and Sustainability Zones. This empowers teams to adapt at the speed of change. For a client rolling out SAFe, we provided training on the Neuroscience of Change so teams could understand the emotions and needs driving reactions to change. This built empathy and unlocked much faster adoption.

Fourth, Enterprise Agility offers scientific frameworks to accelerate strategic mobility - the ability to swiftly reorient strategy with changing conditions. We recently used the ATOM model to help a SAFe client realign investment priorities during a market shift, allowing them to avoid a revenue shortfall.

Fifth, Enterprise Agility provides methods to strengthen organizational health during exponential change, which is foundational but often overlooked. For example, we used the A5 Canvas approach to help a SAFe rollout maintain health while scaling agility.

Combining SAFe with Enterprise Agility concepts equips organizations to thrive in turbulence. This empowers SAFe with broader perspective, future-readiness, empathy for humans in change, strategic mobility, and health. With the two approaches integrated, companies can achieve the bold aspirations that SAFe enables, while also developing resilience to navigate unpredictable conditions ahead. It provides a bridge to evolve SAFe from an Agile Evolution to an Enterprise Agility ecosystem.

Find out more recommendations in Enterprise Agility Fundamentals book.