Mike Burrows recently published a blog post From Flow to Business Agility where he introduced the idea of “increasing decision-making capacity“. This was in part a reaction to my earlier post on Strategy Deployment and Developer Experience which refers to cognitive load. I still support cognitive load as a useful concept, and I don’t think it’s the same as what Mike is proposing, although there is some relationship.
Having said that, this post is not a rebuttal to his post, but one supporting it. I do consider decision-making capacity to be a valuable idea, and something relevant to Strategy Deployment. Thus I would like to highlight and emphasise a few points that I think are particularly important.
Strategy Deployment and Decision-Making Capacity
As a recap, I define Strategy Deployment as:
Any form of organisational improvement in which solutions emerge from the people closest to the problem.
https://availagility.co.uk/2016/02/05/what-is-strategy-deployment/
A more long-winded way of saying this is that it is this. Strategy Deployment is any form of organizational improvement in which solutions emerge as a result of the people closest to the problem making local decisions about those solutions. Those decisions could be about what the solution looks like, how it is implemented, when it gets resolved, where it fits organisationally, who it involves etc.
In other words, Strategy Deployment requires increasing decision-making capacity.
Why Decision-Making Capacity is Important
Having all the elements of TASTE (True North, Aspirations, Strategies, Tactics and Evidence) might be necessary, but is by no means sufficient. Strategy Deployment needs to involve Continuous Strategy and people need to be willing and able to pivot. Too often strategy becomes a victim of Plan Continuation Bias because no one ever declares that the strategies and plans are not working.
Without this ability to adapt, Strategy Deployment just becomes Strategy Planning and Execution again. To use Mike’s language, without decision-making capacity, Strategy Deployment doesn’t generate organisational viability.
Enabling Decision-Making Capacity
How can we help ensure that organisations have sufficient decision-making capacity to make Strategy Deployment effective? Here are three primary ways (as another 3 Cs).
- Content. Specifically having too much content (i.e. WIP) at both the strategic and tactical levels. Too many Strategies lead to them becoming buckets to justify work. That in turn leads to too many Tactics. This unburdens people to have the decision-making capacity in the first place.
- Catchball. Having an inclusive and collaborative process which translates the strategies into daily tactical work – and back again. This includes Backbriefing and addressing the Curse of Knowledge. Thus, Catchball engages people’s decision-making capacity which is now freed up.
- Cadence. This creates the dynamics of a feedback cycle for planning, steering and learning. Cadence is what establishes the forum for people to frequently identify and acknowledge the results and impact of the decision-making capacity.
To summarise, just because you have all the pieces in place for Strategy Deployment, that’s no guarantee of success. People need the capacity to be able to engage in, make, and learn from local decisions about all aspects of their work. And the psychological safety, although that’s another post for the future probably!
I’ve been talking to Robert Snyder recently, he views the team as a “decision making factory”. You might want to check out his book https://amzn.to/47uGYaL