Strategy Deployment and Spotify Rhythm

This is the third in what has turned into a mini series exploring the relationship between Strategy Deployment and other approaches (see Strategy Deployment and Fitness for Purpose and  Strategy Deployment and AgendaShift).

Last month, Henrik Kniberg posted slides from a talk he gave at Agile Sverige on something called Spotify Rhythm which he descibes as “Spotify’s current approach to getting aligned as a company”. While looking through the material, it struck me that what he was describing was a form of Strategy Deployment. This interpretation is based purely on those slides – I haven’t had a chance yet to explore this more deeply with Henrik or anyone else from Spotify. I hope I will do some day, but given that caveat, here’s how I currently understand the approach in terms of the X-Matrix Model.

Spotify Rhythm: Taxonomy

The presentation presents the following “taxonomy” used in “strategic planning”:

Company Beliefs – While this isn’t something I don’t talk about specifically, the concept of beliefs (as opposed to values) does tie in nicely with the idea that Strategy Deployment involves many levels of nested hypotheses and experimentation (as I described in Dynamics of Strategy Deployment). Company Beliefs could be considered to be the highest level, and therefore probably strongest hypotheses.

North Star & 2-Year Goals – A North Star (sometimes called True North) is a common Lean concept (and one I probably don’t talk about enough with regard to Strategy Deployment). It is an overarching statement about a vision of the future, used to set direction. Decisions can be made based on whether they will move the organisation towards (or away from) the North Star. Strategy Deployment is ultimately all in pursuit of enabling the organisational alignment and autonomy which will move it towards the North Star. Given that, the 2-Year Goals can be considered as the Results that moving towards the North Star should deliver.

Company Bets – The Company Bets are the “Big Bets” – “large projects” and “cross-organisation initiatives”. While these sound like high level tactics, I wonder whether they can also be considered to be the Strategies. As mentioned already, Strategy Deployment involves many levels of nested hypothesis and experimentation, and therefore Strategy is a Bet in itself (as are Results , and also Beliefs).

Functional & Market Bets – If the Company Bets are about Strategy, then the Functional and Market Bets are the Tactics implemented by functional or market related teams.

DIBB – DIBB is a framework Spotify use to define bets and “make the chain of reasoning explicit” by showing the relationships between Data, Insights, Beliefs and Bets. Part of that chain of reasoning involves identifying success metrics for the Bets, or in other words, the Outcomes which will indicate if the Bet is returning a positive payoff.

While this isn’t an exact and direct mapping it feels close enough to me. One way of checking alignment would be the ability for anyone to answer some simple questions about the organisations’ journey. I can imagine how Spotify Rhythm provides clarity on how to answer these questions.

  • Do you know where you are heading? North Star
  • Do you know what the destination looks like? 2 Year Goals (Results)
  • Do you know how you will get there? Company Bets (Strategies)
  • Do you know how you will track progress? DIBBs (Outcomes)
  • Do you know how you will make progress? Functional & Market Bets (Tactics)

One final element of Spotify Rhythm which relates to Strategy Deployment is implied in its name – the cadence with which the process runs. Company Bets are reviewed every quarter by the Strategy Team (another reason why they could be considered to be Strategies) and the Functional and Market Bets – also called TPD (Tech-Product-Design) Bets – are reviewed every 6 weeks.

I’d be interested in feedback on alternative interpretations of Spotify Rhythm. Or if you know more about it than I do, please correct anything I’ve got wrong!

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