organisation – latchana.co.uk

Book Review: Accelerate by John Kotter

*Accelerate* is a book by John Kotter, first published in 2014

I’ve been aware of John Kotter’s book Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World as foundational text in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) canon. As someone who operates within organisations adopting the framework, I was curious to understand the significance of the text, and try to appreciate why it is so compelling to help kick start the SAFe movement.

John Kotter is respected thought-leader, author and academic in the field of leadership, strategy and consulting. I had previously read the fictional story Our Iceberg is Melting – another of his books that talks of change and success in a fast changing world. Since this book is written as a fable, I was hoping that Accelerate would not only offer models and practices, but also citable research and thorough case studies to underpin Kotter’s thinking.

The “dual operating system”

In Accelerate, Kotter does well in describing how organisations can apparently adapt to rapid change by adopting a ‘dual operating system’, where the traditional hierarchical co-exists with a more nimble and entrepreneurial network of individuals. These intrinsically motivated individuals are driven by a sense of urgency, are supported by a guiding coalition, are catalysed by short-term success, and other such accelerators that would be familiar to readers of this post.

The dual operating system. Traditional hierarchy on the left, integrated with the entrepreneurial network on the right.

I find the apparent successful marriage of the traditional hierarchical with this network-like structure to be an intriguing, but huge claim. A claim that disappointingly isn’t backed up by citable research or thorough case studies.

For example, Kotter says those operating on the network side need to find time in addition to the time needed to fulfil their duties in the hierarchical side. To explain this, the book is strong on rhetoric, but weak on providing something like detailed first-hand accounts, or day-in-the-life stories. I was hoping to understand how individuals had navigated the trials and tribulations to overcome the cultural status quo, protectionism and suspicion. Without this, I find Kotter claim a tall order, even with the presence of his accelerators.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Knowing that Kotter is an academic, I’m surprise by the lack of evidence-based research from which his models, concepts and practices should emerge. The phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” comes to mind. I found extraordinary evidence is lacking in Accelerate.

The evidence you’re given are mostly brief paragraphs describing what anonymous individuals and organisations have done to adopt the ‘dual operating system’. This stands in stark contrast to other leadership and strategy books, such as Alan Lefley’s and Roger Martin’s Play to Win. Throughout Play to Win the authors lean upon their lessons transforming Proctor and Gamble. I acknowledge this is only one organisation, but at least the case study is authentic, comprehensive and underpins their advice.

Maybe Kotter has other books and research which provide the rigour I’m seeking (let me know if there are). Until I see it, I am sadly unconvinced about the feasibility of what Kotter advocates in Accelerate.

Reflections on The Startup Way – Part 2

The Startup Way: How Entrepreneurial Management Transforms Culture and Drives Growth: Amazon.co.uk: Ries, Eric: 9780241197264: Books — *The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth*. By Eric Ries

In his The Startup Way book, Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses to take advantage of enormous opportunities and overcome challenges resulting from our connected economy.

In this series of posts, I’ll share my key takeaways, and relate those to my own experiences and reflections. In the last article, I explored how organisations corner themselves by becoming over-reliant on their successes. In this article, I’ll introduce and reflect upon the missing organisational capabilities for entrepreneurialism and new growth.

Ries describes these capabilities as:

Create space for experiments with appropriate liability constraints
Fund projects without knowing the return-on-investment (ROI) in advance
Create appropriate milestones for teams that are operating autonomously

In my experience, successful innovation occurs when entrepreneurs’ autonomy is bounded within a governance process which selectively and incrementally invests in strategies that are demonstrating early success. If innovators cannot demonstrate early signs of ROI then they either pivot to a different strategy, or they receive no further funding.

This approach enables appropriate liability constraints, operational autonomy and funding without knowing the ROI upfront. It protects innovations teams from over-committing, and it protects the business from over-investing in strategies which haven’t proven themselves.

The team is liable because they have the responsibility to achieve what’s been agreed. The leaders are also liable in that they must remove organisational impediments and protect the team from the status quo that may hamper the innovation team.

Freedom is constrained to ensure the team and leaders focus on what specifically needs to be learnt at a sustainable pace. The constraints should be both time and funding; for example 4-weeks and $25,000.

Yet, this approach doesn’t mean innovation teams are micromanaged; it’s quite the opposite. Once an innovation team has agreed on the measures of success, gained the support of leaders and received the funding, they have the freedom to explore how to achieve their goals within the agreed constraints.

Couple Buying Meat at a Supermarket — The innovation team relied on the leaders’ support, protection and network to work with store managers who were open to testing the benefits of the Scan and Go app.

Photo by **Jack Sparrow** from **Pexels**

An example of where I’ve supported a retail client achieve this is with their Scan and Go service they were developing. The team wanted if store operations could support customers purchasing items by scanning and purchasing them using smartphones, and then immediately leaving the store. This allowed customers to avoid the checkout queues and put less pressure on the checkout staff.

There was natural concern that there would an increase in theft (known as shrink in the retail industry). To contain risk the innovation team had liability constraints of 2-weeks when they could test a prototype in two stores which were closely monitored. The types of items which could be purchased were also limited.

Assorted Bottles and Cans in Commercial Coolers — To create safe-to-learn constraints, types of items were excluded from the Scan and Go experiments. For example beers, wines and spirits which are high-value items.

Photo by **junjie xu** from **Pexels**

No one knew the ROI upfront. How much would it cost to build and operate? How would it impact sales and shrink? How would store security respond? To find out the team worked with the leaders to agree on measures of success and thresholds.

Within a limited timebox, budget and range of items, the innovation team chose to develop and conduct experiments in a way they felt appropriate. The leaders were on hand to use their social network to identify the rare store managers who were open to partnering with the team.

Without prompting, tentative signs of success were shared between store managers. The excitement of collaborative discovery created interest from area managers. This buzz created a larger opening for the next scale of experimentation. Changed was never pushed onto store and area managers.

This unprompted exchange of stories between different groups shows that innovation is as much a social phenomenon as a technological one.

This example of experimentation with liability constraints, funding without knowing the ROI upfront and allowing teams to operate with autonomy, became an exemplar of entrepreneurialism for my client.

Remember from the last article, that entrepreneurialism is vital to ensure organisations don’t become over-dependent on past successes.

In my next article, I’ll reflect upon my next takeaway for The Startup Way, which will be on scaling the innovators’ successes with the resources of the parent organisation.

Reflections on The Startup Way – Part 1

The Startup Way is a 2017 book by Eric Ries, which is a follow-up to his blockbuster Lean Startup.

In The Startup Way, Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses to take advantage of enormous opportunities and overcome challenges resulting from our connected economy.

In this series of posts, I’ll share my key takeaways, and relate those to my own experiences and reflections. Let’s start off by exploring how organisations corner themselves by becoming over-reliant on their successes.

Ries states that if an organisation is constrained by capacity, they’d typically endeavour to acquire more, in a bid to gain greater market share. New products tend to be variations of existing product lines. Firms compete primarily on price, quality, variety and distribution. Barriers to entry are high, and growth is slow.

In my view, if exploited for too long, what Ries describes can result in dangerous consequences. It can create a difficult-to-reverse dependence on legacy successes. Repeating and scaling an organisation’s previous successes can become its unspoken raison d’etre. In an increasingly fast-moving market, this can be disastrous.

The over-reliance on existing successes also develops an expectation that stifles the emergence of innovation within organisations. Success leads to criteria that promote the fine-tuning of existing products, processes and behaviours. This makes it difficult to accommodate internal disruption, vulnerability and relearning – qualities necessary for innovation.

Organisations scale success by developing a highly tuned operational system. This is often at the detriment to their capacity to innovate.

I believe this ties into Apex Predator Theory developed by Dave Snowden. Organisations will eventually fail as they become competent and too wedded to the current operations and market offerings.

Apex Predator Overlapping S-Curves | AGLX Consulting — Apex Predator Overlapping S-Curves. Illustrated by aglx.consulting

My next article reflects on another takeaway from The Startup Way – the missing capability that enables organisations to overcome their over-dependence on past successes.

Patterns for Strategic Execution

I’m often asked by leaders to support their organisation to execute their strategies. So over the years, I’ve come to recognise common anti-patterns which hamper organisations from delivering upon their strategies.

In my last article, I shared those anti-patterns to strategic execution. In this article, I’ll share the patterns which support the mindset, ways of working and conditions for effective strategic execution.

But first, let’s remind ourselves of what is a strategy and how it relates to organisational transformation?

Strategy and Organisational Transformation

“A strategy is something which gives consistency over time and contains the essence of how you’re going to be different”
Gary Hamel

An organisation is likely to be employing multiple strategies. Each strategy is a vehicle for organisational transformation and value creation. They can fall into these categories:

Business – In a rapidly changing world, what’s right for the business and the colleagues? Yesterday’s success may not be tomorrow’s.
Competitive market – How should the company differentiate itself? What privileged insights or capabilities does it want to bring to bear?
Customers/stakeholders – What new or existing wants, needs and desires does the company want to address? Which ones should it stop serving?

Uncertainty means an organisation should test & learn which strategies will fit the organisation’s vision. A vision describes what the organisation wants to become; it’s an aspirational and motivational indeterminate future goal.

To move with velocity to drive profitable growth and become an even better McDonald’s serving more customers delicious food each day around the world.
McDonald’s Vision Statement

Now, onto the common patterns which I’ve come to recognise as conducive to strategic execution…

Patterns for Strategic Execution

Shared Vision

Co-develop a unifying vision statement which is both aspirational and motivational for leaders, innovators and the wider business. This serves as a North Star which all strategies coherently work towards, judged by a common set of success criteria.

Strategies as hypotheses

Create a safe-to-learn environment. Then rapidly test which strategies fit the organisation’s vision. Use MVPs to test a strategy’s worthiness where the minimum is done to maximise learning. If you haven’t nailed it, don’t scale it.

Protect Innovators

Appoint a leader who creates time and support for innovators to test, learn and recover from failure without being impeded by the status quo. Leaders must free-up their own time to remove organisational impediments and understand when to encourage teams to push on.

Metered Finance

Like venture capital investment, metered finance is the incremental release of funding judged on the evidence of successful outcomes. Such governance helps innovators know when to persevere, pivot or pull-the-plug on their strategies.

High ambiguity

Handpick individuals to form highly supported innovation teams. Such individuals are able to deal with constant change and novelty. They can cope well with failure, experimentation and can rapidly test their gut feelings.

Social Capital

Once they’ve found early success, innovators will need the support of operators. Operators have the access to capital and scale. Support individuals who have, as Mary Uhl-Bien describes, the Social Capital to bring those two worlds together.

Anti-patterns to Strategic Execution

In this article, I introduce the main anti-patterns I’ve come across. In the next article, I’ll share the patterns which create the mindset, ways of working and conditions for more effective strategic execution.

But first what is a strategy and how does it relate to organisational transformation?

Strategy and Organisational Transformation

“A strategy is something which gives consistency over time and contains the essence of how you’re going to be different”
Gary Hamel

An organisation is likely to be employing multiple strategies. Each strategy is a vehicle for organisational transformation and value creation. They can fall into these categories:

Business – In a rapidly changing world, what’s right for the business and the colleagues? Yesterday’s success may not be tomorrow’s.
Competitive market – How should the company differentiate itself? What privileged insights or capabilities does it want to bring to bear?
Customers/stakeholders – What new or existing wants, needs and desires does the company want to address? Which ones should it stop serving?

To move with velocity to drive profitable growth and become an even better McDonald’s serving more customers delicious food each day around the world.
McDonald’s Vision Statement

Now, onto the common anti-patterns which I’ve come to recognise as preventing strategic execution…

Anti-patterns to Strategic Execution

Seeking complete agreement upfront

Leaders delay strategic execution by seeking consensus that’s further delayed by overplanning. There’s little appetite to test convictions rapidly by starting small and deciding whether to continue based on validated learning.

No appetite and capability

Over investment and comfort in the status quo results in no genuine appetite for disruption, learning and discovery. This can lead an organisation into what Dave Snowden terms Competency Induced Failure.

Innovation teams not protected

Innovation teams are constrained by previous commitments, ill-fitting governance and sceptics that are vested in maintaining the status quo. Know that the status quo will hinder innovation through apprehension, bureaucracy and claims about tradition.

Conflicting incentives & mindset

Operators are habituated to maintenance and continuous improve what already exists. Operators are incentivised to deliver outcomes built upon a backbone of existing success. Such a mindset and incentives are the antitheses of those of the innovator’s.

Disjointed strategies

Often as the result of misaligned leaders following a merger or consolidation, separate leaders champion separate and ill-fitting strategies. These disjointed strategies don’t roll-up to a common set of success measures and are not faithful to a shared vision.

Uninvolved leaders

Leaders are unable to free-up time so they manage strategic execution at arms-length. They do not have the capacity to truly support and co-discover the emerging journey of the innovation team. Neither do they have the focus to remove organisational impediments.

Patterns to Strategic Execution

In the next article, I’ll share the patterns which create the mindset, ways of working and conditions for effective strategic execution.