I’ve blogged about my thoughts on Strategy Deployment and Agendashift (as well as how to use Agendashift with the X-Matrix) some time ago, and more recently I wrote about Strategy Deployment and the Four Disciplines of Execution. Over the last few months I have had the opportunity to combine the two models, and this post will give a high level overview of how I did that.
TL;DR: I used the various elements and activities in Agendashift to generate the inputs into the Four Disciplines of Execution.
Here’s a longer explanation.
- The Agendashift Discovery exercises Celebration-5W, True North and FOTO lead to the Plan an a Page, which provides a set of outcomes that can be used to identify and define the 4DX Wildly Important Goal(s). One (or more) of the medium or long term outcomes can be selected and refined to use the 4DX template “from X to Y by When”. It’s also worth noting that the short term outcomes can also give some guidance towards the 4DX Leading Measures (see 3. below).
- Then the Agendashift Exploration activities of debriefing the assessment, selecting high leverage prompts to work on, and using FOTO again, generates more outcomes which can be used as input to identify the 4DX Leading Measures. Selected short term outcomes, either from the Plan on a Page (see point 1. above) or from the assessment prompts, can be used to feed an ODIM exercise, moving from the Outcomes, to Decisions, to Insights and finally to Measures.
- Both the WIG (from 1. above) and Leading Measures (from 2. above) inform the 4DX Compelling Scoreboard as usual with no additional work needed from Agendashift
- Agendashift Mapping and Elaboration lead to Experiment A3s, which is where the seeds for action can be found and around which people collaborate on discovering and evolving their own solutions.
- Finally, the Agendashift Operation element is implemented with the 4DX Cadence of Accountability. The weekly (or more frequently if appropriate) meetings review status of the A3s, look at the current scoreboard, and agree actions for the following period. As Experiment A3s are completed, or the WIG and Leading Measures are progressed, new experiments and indicators can be identified and chosen.
The two approaches worked together almost seamlessly with only minor modifications to the core Agendashift workshops being needed to launch the Four Disciplines of Execution. This is something I tend to do anyway, as I have a preference to identify Evidence (as per TASTE) before exploring Tactics to minimise measures being influenced by confirmation bias.
Its definitely something I’ll try again and would recommend giving it a go. Let me know if you’ve had similar experiences.