Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
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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 …
“Playing to Win” is a book by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin about “How Strategy Really Works” and it describes a model, the Strategic Choice Cascade, developed by the authors at P&G. This model leads to the following “five strategic questions that create and sustain lasting competitive advantage”: Have you defined winning, and are you crystal clear about your …
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 …
The X-Matrix Jigsaw Puzzle is what I call the exercise I use in Strategy Deployment workshops to help people experience creating an X-Matrix in a short space of time. It consists of a pre-defined and generic set of “pieces” with which to populate the various sections, deciding which pieces should go where, and how they fit together. I’ve just created a page …
I’ve had a couple of conversations in recent weeks in which Impact Mapping came up in relation to Strategy Deployment so here’s a post on my thoughts about how the two fit together. An Impact Map is a form of mind-map developed by Gojko Adzic, visualising the why, who, how and what of an initiative. More specifically, it shows the goals, …
I promised to say more about correlations in my last post on how to TASTE Success with the X-Matrix . One of the things I like about the X-Matrix is that it allows clarity of alignment, without relying on an overly analytical structure. Rather than consisting of simple hierarchical parent-child relationships, it allows more elaborate many-to-many relationships of varying types. This creates a messy coherence – …
I’ve put together a new X-Matrix A3 template to go with the Backbriefing and Experiment A3s I published last month. Together, these 3 templates work well together as part of a Strategy Deployment process, although I should reiterate again that the templates alone are not sufficient. A culture of collaboration and learning is also necessary as part of Catchball. …
This post is an unapologetic riff on Richard Rumelt’s book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. The book is a wonderful analysis of what makes a good strategy and how successful organisations use strategy effectively. I found that it reinforced my notion that Agility is a Strategy and so this is also a way to help me organise …
I’ve been meaning to share a couple of A3 templates that I’ve developed over the last year or so while I’ve been using Strategy Deployment. To paraphrase what I said when I described my thoughts on Kanban Thinking, we need to create more templates, rather than reduce everything down to “common sense” or “good practice”. In other words, the more A3s and Canvases …