Collective Strategic Sensing (CSS) is a critical component in Enterprise Agility because it provides the inputs, insights, and awareness needed for companies to navigate ambiguity and accelerated change effectively. Instead of only focusing on external metrics and data like most traditional strategic planning models, Enterprise Agility emphasizes the importance of sensing across three levels—yourself, your company/organization, and the external environment/markets.

By developing self-awareness, you become conscious of your own emotional patterns, biases, and ways of thinking that may limit your perspective or impact decision making. Strategic sensing within your company involves gathering feedback, observations, and insights to understand what your people need to stay aligned, fulfilled, and able to adapt amid change. And sensing trends, events, and signals in the broader environment allows you to get ahead of external threats and opportunities.

The key is that Collective Strategic Sensing (CSS) looks both inward and outward to gain a multidimensional view. This allows you to make choices that balance and integrate priorities across all stakeholders—customers, company, and workforce. You can introduce changes or innovations that provide mutual benefits instead of just maximizing a single bottomline metric.

For instance, by sensing frustration among your people due to constant reorganizations, you might improve workforce wellbeing by implementing more stable team structures. Or by detecting an emerging customer preference for sustainability, you could develop greener operations that also reduce costs.

The ongoing insights from Collective Strategic Sensing (CSS) allow an organization to continuously adapt in a way that creates shared value and progress. It provides the fuel for Enterprise Agility by revealing where opportunities exist to better meet everyone's needs. And it enables resilience in the face of uncertainty.