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.
Here are some of the areas of experience where I’ve help clients’ organisations increase their effectiveness through better business alignment and outcomes. Contact me (dean@latchana.co.uk) explore how these experiences could help you, your team and organisation.
Dean Latchana’s executive coaching experience has helped leaders transform their organisation to deliver better business outcomes, create high-performing teams and increase business agility.
For example, for a global insurer, Dean coached executives to adopt an approach to better align their vision with their organisation’s strategies and activities. For a UK telecom company, he worked with the CTO to design an executive training workshop.
For a financial services firm, he provided comprehensive support for their leaders to adopt a continuous improvement mindset to kick-start their organisation’s transformation.
Portfolio Coaching
Dean Latchana has extensive experience supporting clients create a high-level portfolio of their organisation’s strategies, goals and activities.
For example, for a multinational engineering company, Dean created a unified view of initiatives, which allows their teams to increase their awareness of the impact of their project choices.
Using a lean portfolio management framework, he helped leaders of a global consultancy better articulate their strategic choices and understand where gaps may exist. For a financial services company, he helped product owners & managers create a nested portfolio for product innovation and strategic improvements.
Team Coaching
For many clients, across a range of sectors, Dean Latchana has provided context-specific team coaching, which has allowed teams to continuously improve their ways of working and tie their activities to customer need.
For example, for a financial services client, Dean helped set up, train and guide the maturity of several teams so that they become business outcome-focused and learn through frequent stakeholder feedback.
For a British luxury fashion house, he worked with teams and leaders to understand where pain-points exist and help teams gain greater autonomy resulting in rapid decision-making and lighter-weight governance.
Client-specific outcomes measures
Dean Latchana has helped several clients create a means to judge and prioritise decisions based on client-specific outcome measures. This has allowed teams to determine whether to persevere, pivot or discontinue initiatives based on their value towards strategic objectives.
For a financial services client, Dean helped product owners use client-specific measures to prioritise and balance backlog outcomes; this enabled teams to better articulate the worthiness of their output.
For a multi-national engineering company, he helped individuals map the spread of their activities using client-specific measures thus enabling them to gain an improved understanding of their team’s value creation.
OKR shaping experiences
The OKR support Dean Latchana has provided clients has enabled them to better tie once disparate and poorly understood initiatives to a wider body of strategic need, thus allowing individuals to better articulate their contributions.
For example, using OKRs, for a financial services client, Dean helped a security champion reframe his approach to expressing security concerns, thus enabling him to present a more coherent business case to his leaders.
Using OKRs, Dean has helped a global insurer start their journey to test the strategic credibility of their portfolio items. This was built on an OKR framework that would improve the link between output, outcome and business impact, and make use of leading and lagging indicators of success.
Change management (ways of working culture-shaping)
Through team coaching, leadership support and rapid test-and-learn principles, Dean Latchana has helped organisations modernise their approach to change management. This has helped leaders create an environment where teams can co-create ways of working which promotes collaboration, alignment and synchronisation.
Dean has helped leaders and teams co-create change principles such as action before perfection and invite don’t impose to help create a healthier culture that will drive greater business outcomes and satisfaction.
For example, starting with training, then with embedded coaching within a department, he helped a financial services client create change that has attracted other departments and leaders to modernise their change management approach.
Organisation design (value stream) experience
Many clients have turned to Dean Latchana to help them adapt to external market changes and address internal organisation challenges. The change Dean has helped clients create range from continuous improvement of existing operations to a radical shift in mindset, expectations and customer focus. To achieve either, organisation design is an essential aspect, as is the guidance he provides to improve their value streams.
He has used value stream mapping to help a multinational engineering company recognise the interconnected relationships of upstream and downstream activities; this enabled teams to understand where delays exist and re-organise their ways of working to meet customer need more rapidly.
Often teams and leaders don’t work from a common understanding of business value. Without aligning to what is valuable, individuals will have an impaired ability to make trade-off decisions such as “Where should we focus our finite resources and attention”, and “What does good look like? And for whom?”.
Too often we don’t think in business value terms. We’re simply here to get the job done and move onto the next assignment or project. There’s a keenness to show output – the busy work which demonstrates effort and speed.
However, it’s important to pause and ask “Why is this project more important than these other projects? Who is it for? What’s the source of our confidence that it’ll benefit them?”
Business Value is elusive
The Art of Business Value. A 2016 book by Mark Schwartz
The Art of Business Value, by Mark Schwartz, helps overcome the lack of understanding of what business value is. With refreshing wit and insight, Schwartz challenges the assumptions of many, such as those in leadership, financial accounting and within the agile community. He offers sound guidance that’ll help many determine the elusive meaning of business value that’s contextual to their organisation.
The book explains that when we consider business value we often turn to financial accounting measures such as Return On Investment or Net Present Value. Schwartz states such measures tie poorly to strategies and don’t sufficiently factor-in risk and uncertainty. Neither do these short-term measures do well at accounting for the inherent value locked-up in enterprise infrastructure and the business agility that such assets should enable.
Schwartz says that business value can be hidden in an organisation’s rules and processes. So rather than disregard bureaucracy, we should examine it to discover the values held within an organisation. If we consider bureaucracy as a product of institutional memory, its rules and processes can become a rich source to discover what an organisation values.
If we consider bureaucracy as a product of institutional memory, its rules and processes can become a rich source to discover what an organisation values.
The book also unpicks the thorny issue of who should be charged with establishing business value versus those who execute and deliver that value.
What is Business Value
Schwartz defines business value as a hypothesis held by the organization’s leadership as to what will best accomplish the organization’s ultimate goals or desired outcomes.
This definition recognises firstly that business value is not the same for all organisations, secondly that it cannot be boiled down to one measure, and thirdly determining business value necessitates a journey of discovery, dialogue and collaboration across many business areas.
Introducing Business Value thinking
With my support, many of my clients have taken such a journey. This has often started with a leadership envisioning workshop – an approach which sets out the organisation’s vision and which creates an open debate about the worthiness of strategic initiatives.
With such approaches leaders create a mindset and process which shifts the conversation away from endless horse-trading and towards organisational learning through iterative execution and review.
In a dynamic and uncertain world, the approaches I’ve shared and the thinking conveyed in The Art of Business Value will create a common understanding of business value. Doing so enables teams and leaders to align on what’s valuable and create a responsive organisation.
Conclusion
With The Art of Business Value, in a little over a hundred pages, Mark Schwartz has done a fantastic job to help challenge convention and offer guidance that’ll help our organisations and clients define what it values and achieve success.
