More on Leader-Leader and Autonomy-Alignment

I had some great feedback about my last post on Strategy Deployment and Leader-Leader from Mike Cottmeyer via Facebook, where he pointed out that my graph overlaying the Leader-Leader and Autonomy-Alignment models could be mis-interpreted. It could suggest that simply increasing alignment/clarity and autonomy/control would result in increased capability. That’s not the case, so I have revised the image to this one.

What Marquet is describing with the Leader-Leader model is that in order to be able to give people more control, you need to support them by both increasing the clarity of their work, and developing their competence to do the work. Thus, as you increase clarity and competence you can give more control. Competence, therefore is a 3rd dimension to the graph, which we can also call Ability to maintain the alliteration.

  • Increasing Ability leads to more Competence
  • Increasing Alignment leads to more Clarity
  • Increasing Autonomy leads to more Control being given.

The dashed arc is intended to show that increasing on ability/competence and alignment/clarity is required before autonomy/control can be increased.

 

A Strategy Deployment Diagram

I came up with an initial diagram to visually summarise Strategy Deployment when I wrote about the dynamics. However, while it showed some of the collaborative elements, I never felt it was sufficient, and still had a hint of hierarchy about it that I didn’t like.

More recently, while reading “Understanding Hoshin Kanri: An Introduction by Greg Watson“, I saw a diagram I liked much more, and was inspired to tweak it to fit my understanding and experience of the approach.

Working from the outside of the picture…

The outer loop shows the people involved and their interactions as a collaboration rather than as a hierarchy. Whilst levels of seniority are represented, these levels describe the nature of decisions being made. Thus the three primary groups are the Leadership Team, Operational Teams and Implementation Teams which reflect the three primary roles in Catchball, and which are responsible for co-creating and owning the various A3 Templates. The bi-directional arrows between these teams show how they collaborate to discover, negotiate and agree on the Outcomes, Plans and Actions. (Note: the original diagram had the arrows only going clockwise, which suggested a directing and reporting dynamic to me).

The three inner circles show the main focuses of each team. The Strategy Team set direction through the True North and Aspirations. The Operational Teams maintain alignment to the intent of the Strategies by making Investments in improvement opportunities. The Implementation Teams have autonomy to realise the strategies by determining and carrying out Tactics and generating Evidence of progress.

The intersections of these circles map onto the three elements of Stephen Bungay’s Directed Opportunism (from his book “The Art of Action”), and they describe the essence of the collaboration between the different groups. The Strategy Team and Operational Teams work together to establish positive Outcomes. The Operational Teams and Implementation Teams work together to define plausible Plans. The Implementation Teams and Strategy Team work together to review the results of the Actions.

Finally, the central intersection of all the circles, and the combination of all of these elements, is a continuous Transformation –  the result of everyone working together with both alignment and autonomy.

Given this visualisation, we can also overlay the three A3 Templates on top, showing which teams have primary responsibility for each.

Like all diagrams, this is a simplification. Its the map, and not the territory. The collaborations are not as separate and clear cut as it might imply. Rather, much of this work is emerging and evolving, collectively and simultaneously. I still believe, however, that it is a useful picture of Strategy Deployment as “any form of organisational improvement in which solutions emerge from the people closest to the problem.”

Alignment and Autonomy in Strategy Deployment

Following on from my previous What is Strategy Deployment and Dynamics of Strategy Deployment posts, there is a model I like which I think helps to show how the mechanics and the dynamics work together.

In The Art of Action, Stephen Bungay describes how Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army for 30 years from 1857, had an important insight regarding Alignment and Autonomy. Previously these two had been viewed as extremes at the end of a single scale. Having high alignment meant having no autonomy because alignment could only be achieved through defining detailed plans which everyone should follow. Equally, high autonomy meant having no alignment because autonomy would result in everyone doing their own thing with no regard for each others actions.

Von Moltke’s insight was that alignment and autonomy are not a single scale requiring a tradeoff between the two ends, but two different axis which can actually reinforce each other. Thus not only is it possible to have both high alignment and high autonomy, but high alignment can enable high autonomy.

Alignment and Autonomy

They key to making this possible is differentiating between intent and action. Alignment is achieved by clearly stating intent centrally, such that autonomy can be achieved by allowing action to be decentralised in support of the intent. This requires mechanisms to both clarify and amplify intent, and enable and encourage local action. Thus using the definition of Strategy Deployment as “any form of organisational improvement in which solutions emerge from the people closest to the problem”, solving the problem is the intent, and the emerged solution is the action.

Using this model we can now describe two mechanisms necessary to make this happen. Alignment can be achieved with the X-Matrix, which enables the conversations about intent and summarises and visualises the results of those conversations. In other words, the X-Matrix shows how results, strategy, outcomes and tactics align and reinforce each other. Autonomy can be achieved through Catchball (Bungay describes the equivalent as back-briefing), which enables the X-Matrix to be passed around the organisation such that everyone can reflect, give feedback, and improve it, helping focus action on meeting the intent.

X-Matrix and Catchball

Viewing Strategy Deployment in this light also highlights a symmetry with the Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose model of intrinsic motivation described by Dan Pink in his popular book Drive. Autonomy is a direct match in both models and purpose is equivalent to intent. Mastery is then the result of improving capability autonomously with strong alignment to intent.

Drive

What this way of looking at Strategy Deployment shows is that both the X-Matrix and Catchball are necessary components. Just using the X-Matrix with out Catchball will probably result in it being used as just another top-down document to command and control employees. Similarly, just using Catchball without an X-Matrix will probably result in collaboration around local improvements with no overall organisational improvement.