Speed is the new currency of business. The problem is that most organizations were never built to spend it. Jamie Durling, Chief People Officer and transformation partner for global brands including Moncler Group and Stone Island, has spent his career inside the tension between how companies are structured and how markets actually move.
His conclusion after years of cross-regional transformation work is that agility is not a mindset. It is an operating model. And most organizations are running the wrong one. “Most organizations are structured for control,” Durling says. “Not for change.”
Structure Either Enables Speed or Kills It
The first place agility breaks down is the one nobody wants to examine because it requires dismantling something that took years to build. Legacy hierarchies slow decision-making to a pace the market has long since left behind. Five approvals to pivot is not governance. It is paralysis dressed up as a process. In leading cross-regional transformation initiatives at Moncler Group, Durling made decentralization the first structural move. Decision-making authority pushed closer to the customer, teams empowered to act without waiting for permission to travel up and back down the chain. The result was not chaos. It was speed with strategic alignment intact. “When you empower employees, you are enabling them,” he says. “This leads them closer to the customer while staying aligned to strategic priorities.” The org chart either creates that proximity or obstructs it. There is rarely a middle ground.
Talent Systems That Move With the Business
Restructuring the hierarchy creates the conditions for agility. What sustains it is a talent infrastructure that evolves as fast as the business does. Performance goals set in January that bear no relationship to market reality in September are not a talent system. They are a calendar exercise. At Moncler, Durling aligned performance frameworks across functions and regions in a way that created consistency without rigidity, a distinction that sounds simple and is genuinely difficult to execute across cultures and geographies. “That approach allowed us to scale growth strategies without compromising speed or culture,” he says. Learning paths, leadership expectations, and performance criteria all need to flex with market demands, not lag behind them by a planning cycle. Organizations that treat talent systems as fixed infrastructure discover they are managing people for a market that no longer exists.
Reward Adaptability, Not Just Achievement
The culture that gets built is the culture that gets rewarded. Organizations that celebrate only outcomes train their people to avoid the experiments that outcomes require. Risk aversion compounds quietly until the organization finds itself unable to move at the speed the market demands, not because the people lack capability, but because the incentive structure has been punishing the behavior agility requires.
Durling’s intervention at the leadership assessment level changed what got recognized and therefore what got practiced. Agility indicators, collaboration under pressure, decision-making velocity, learning speed, and resilience when outcomes are uncertain became part of how leaders were evaluated. “It changed how leaders showed up and how teams responded,” he says. The shift is not cosmetic. When adaptability is measured with the same seriousness as revenue targets, it stops being a value on a slide and starts being a behavior in the room.
Built for the Market, Not Chasing It
The organizations that will define competitive advantage in fast-moving markets are not the ones with the most sophisticated strategy. They are the ones where the strategy can actually be executed at the speed the market demands, because the culture, talent systems, and reward structures are all pulling in the same direction. “The most resilient companies are the ones that build agility into their culture, not just their strategy,” Durling says. The difference between moving with the market and chasing it is entirely in how the organization was built before the pressure arrived.
Follow Jamie Durling on LinkedIn for more insights on agile culture, people leadership, and HR transformation for global organizations.
