Here’s another lose I’d like to share: “Deep social problem-solving with the aid of physical material”
Let’s relate this to research that reveals tool-use as an extension of our body.
“When we do something as apparently simple as picking up a screwdriver, our brain automatically adjusts what it considers body to include the tool. We can literally feel things with the end of the screwdriver.”
12 Rules for Life (Jordan B Peterson)
I speculate that tool-use (including physical material) doesn’t only extend our physical perception of self. We also attach symbolism and meaning. Think of children personifying and creating stories with a crude rag doll.
When objects are used socially, such as during a collaboration workshop, the symbolism and attached meaning have unspoken shared significance.
Does the digital and remote world in which we now operate offer the same potential as the placemaking of a shared physical environment? Does it equate to the emergent symbolism, attached meaning and collective perception that arises when collaborating with physical material?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth. By Eric Ries
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.
Kodak has become the go-to case study of an organisation that became myopic and over-committed to its past 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. 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.
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.
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 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?
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 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.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
