Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
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Dave Snowden recently posted a series of blog posts on A Sense of Direction, about the use of goals and targets with Cynefin. As the X-Matrix uses measures in two of its sections (Aspirations and Evidence) I found that useful in clarifying my thinking on how I generally approach those areas. Lets start by addressing Dave’s two primary concerns; the …
Before reading this post, I encourage you to have a go at this quick puzzle to test your problem solving. Go on, you won’t regret it! How did you do? I’ve used this challenge numerous times in various talks and workshops and I find that the majority of people follow the same pattern. They only test their hypotheses by guessing …
I’ve noticed a lot of conversation recently (mostly on Twitter) debating how prescriptive, or not, we should be when helping teams through an Agile Transformation (i.e. helping them use Agile approaches to be more Agile)? Do we tell teams exactly what to do initially, or allow them complete freedom to figure it out for themselves? Or something else? Worshipping False …
I was asked recently for guidance on facilitating a workshop to populate an X-Matrix. My initial response was that I don’t have a fixed approach because its so contextual. It depends on who is in the room, what is already known or decided, what the existing approaches are, how much time we have etc. On reflection though, I realised that …
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 …
This is a continuation my series comparing Strategy Deployment and other approaches, with the intent of showing that there are may ways of approaching it and highlighting the common ground. Leader-Leader is the name David Marquet gives to a model of leadership in his book Turn the Ship Around, which tells the story of his experiences and learnings when he …
A Strategy Deployment cadence is the rhythm with which you plan, review and steer your organisational change work. When I blogged about cadence eight years ago I said that… “cadence is what gives a team a feeling of demarcation, progression, resolution or flow. A pattern which allows the team to know what they are doing and when it will be …
An X-Matrix is a template used in organisational improvement that concisely visualises the alignment of an organisation’s True North, Aspirations, Strategies, Tactics and Evidence on a single piece of paper, usually A3 size (29.7 x 42.0cm, 11.69 x 16.53 inches). The main elements can be described as follows: True North – the orientation which informs what should be done. This …
This is the another post in my series comparing Strategy Deployment and other approaches, with the intent to show that there are may ways of approaching it and highlight the common ground. In May this year Dan North published a great post about applying OKRs – Objectives and Key Results. I’ve been aware of OKRs for some time, and we experimented …
During a recent kanban training course, this question came up and my simple answer seemed to be a surprise and an “aha” moment. I tweeted an abbreviated version of the question and answer, and got lots of interesting and valid responses. Few of the responses really addressed the essence of my point, so this post is a more in-depth answer …