Our point of view articles are based on insights from the marketplace considered through the lens of our experience and our study.
Think of a Meeting as a Process
For years, we heard from our clients about their love-hate relationship with meetings. Meetings are critical not only to our work with others, but they a core to just about every organization’s success. In our research, we found hundreds of very tactical recommendations; but we did not find any overall, structured approach to meetings. This article recommends Thinking of a Meeting as a Process.
How To Adopt Agile Business Practices: A SAFe 5.0 Flyby
Determining how to adopt agile business practices is best aided by a comprehensive framework. In SAFe 5.0 Flyby (Part 2) we build on a conceptual foundation of Lean-Agile utilizing 7 group areas to structure and understand more than 100 elements of the scalable, comprehensive SAFe approach. Part 2 of a 2 part series.
How To Adopt Agile Business Practices: Basic Concepts
Determining how to adopt agile business practices is best aided by a comprehensive framework. We like the scaled agile framework (SAFe) starting with an Lean-Agile mindset (Basic Concepts). Part 1 builds a conceptual foundation for a scalable approach is characterized and supported by more than 100 elements (SAFe 5.0 Flyby). Part 1 of a 2 part series.
Getting to the next-normal requires 3 key, but common, building blocks: a stress-tested strategy, a vision and an adaptive roadmap. And, requires three dynamic capabilities: Agile leadership for organizational adaptability, Scenarios to bound uncertainty, and Supply Chain for operational resilience
Supply Chain for Operational Resilience, At-A-Glance
Supply Chain, along with Agile Leadership and Scenarios, is 1 of 3 COVID/crisis-era capabilities supporting the path “Getting to your next-normal.” This at-a-glance article quickly outlines key elements to consider for supply chain, with focus on building resilience through assessment and general operations
Agile Leadership for Organizational Adaptability, At-A-Glance
Agile Leadership, along with Scenarios and Supply Chain, is 1 of 3 COVID/crisis-era capabilities supporting the path “Getting to your next-normal.” This at-a-glance article quickly outlines key elements to consider for Agile Leadership, with focus on direction and business agile as an organizing concept
Scenarios to Bound Uncertainty, At-A-Glance
Scenarios, along with Agile Leadership and Supply Chain, is 1 of 3 COVID/crisis-era capabilities supporting the path “Getting to your next-normal.” This at-a-glance article quickly outlines key elements to consider when leading within a highly uncertain environment.
Results’ Catalyst- Leading and Managing Change
Leading and managing change can successfully catalyze results, but it requires an integrated approach including: 1) support of individual change; 2) support of organizational change; 3) nimble planning and execution; and, 4) relentless integration
After Action Review (AAR) provides a basis for learning-driven improvement and a corner-stone of organizational agility. Also, consider expanding the concept of event analysis to include a full life-cycle of Before-Action, During-Action and After-Action Reviews
Why Agile Management? Because it is an increasingly VUCA world
Agile is an effective approach to managing in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. We share how to think about uncertainty through the lens of the Cynefin framework’s domains of simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. And, we illustrate several management approaches mapped to the Cynefin frame
What You Need to Know About Business Models
Starting with a common vocabulary of Professor Christensen’s (HBS) popular 4-part model: Customer Value Proposition; Resources; Processes; Profit Formula. The emphasis on each of the 4 dimensions varies during three discrete stages of maturity. We then share a general management framework successfully used in multiple industry verticals.
Elements of Continuous Improvement
Elements of continuous improvement are based on analysis of 10 popular continuous improvement methodologies. We identified 28 common elements and grouped them into three lifecycle meta categories of Direction, Analysis and Execution. Based on our work to embed continuous improvement within a client, we share some of our approach thinking.
Safe Execution: Business-IT risk discussion
Getting away from C-I-NO! Discuss Business-IT risk more rationally by considering the 4A’s of Availability (of business processes), Access (by the right people), Accuracy (of the information) and Agility (of change). But the most critical element is start the dialogue with IT.
We explore the blue ocean growth metaphor (i.e., don’t look for growth in highly competitive, red ocean, product/market structures) by summarizing a frame made popular by Kim and Mauborgne (c. 2004), including bringing in what we believe inspired Kim and Mauborgne- Ansoff’s product/market matrix (c. late 1950’s).
Change Leadership- Traversing the emotional cycles of change
Traversing the emotional cycles of change is critical to successful change leadership- achieving business results. With research, now common belief, that more than 2/3 of transformation efforts fail, we explore an analogy of significant change with the documented stages of cancer patients.
The Email Opportunity for Improving Collaboration
The email opportunity for improving collaboration considers how we spend half of our work-year on email. The new collaborative tools with more enhanced search, ask and share capabilities offer an obvious solution, as long as we don’t end up doing both.
The Calculus of Capabilities- An integrated maturity model
We present two foundational, integrated maturity frameworks as a follow-up to our previous post “The Calculus of Capabilities“, where we explored various capability maturity models (CMMs) by reverse engineering nearly 20 common CMMs.
In The Calculus of Capabilities we explore the breadth of approximately 20 common capability maturity models (CMMs), and we observed from our reverse engineering the linkage between maturity-level and scope-of-involvement. We propose a 5-level progression as a CMM base framework.
