What's mature - working well?

What have we been sticking to that we should rethink?

How are our reimagining efforts going?

What are some new ideas we've been thinking about?

Are there any ideas we decided to invest in but haven't had the chance to do anything about yet?

What's the traction/progress on new initiatives we started?

These are questions from the EcoCycle Planning technique that you could use to reflect on your product/s, business, life...

For example, let's say you are a Company/Product leader and want to explore "How is our Operating Model/System doing? Where should we focus next?"

This technique works great for a self-reflection as well as a group conversation.

You can let the answers to the questions freely emerge...

Or if you're already aiming at specific operating outcomes you might use those to seed the EcoCycle.

For example - here's a list that could work for an organization that's aiming to adopt a Product Operating Model (in this case, across a multi-portfolio enterprise just to make it interesting...):

• We Maximize product outcomes and business impact by applying product-oriented LPM thinking from initial business consideration through business impact realization
• We Derisk strategic product/technology investments (Epics) through experimentation and data-driven decision making
• We Steer at the right altitude - Providing strategy (OKRs) and appropriate guardrails, and empowering them to maximize outcomes.
• We’re aligning our resources/investments across the enterprise to Enterprise Strategy
• Our people use Enterprise Strategy (OKRs) to drive their product plans and execution.
• We improve portfolio throughput and time to market by focusing on a manageable set of portfolio-level initiatives.
• We effectively manage and deliver complex cross-portfolio enterprise outcomes.
• We continuously look for ways to improve portfolio empowerment/responsiveness/agility/outcomes - by inspecting and reconsidering portfolio/enterprise ways of working.
• We nurture and empower strategic, product-oriented, entrepreneurial initiative owners to maximize innovation outcomes for strategic portfolio and enterprise initiatives.

(Hey - would you find an Ecocycle-based Product Operating Model retrospective template useful? Please reply and let me know. I promise to make something if I hear from enough people)

Once you answer these questions, the next step is to reflect on what you're seeing, dive deeper into a few areas, and then align on a few changes to focus on.

Here's the thing though - this doesn't have to be a big deal facilitation session. You could print out an EcoCycle, take 20 minutes to fill it out, then ask yourself "So What? Now What?".

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PS Do you have a leadership offsite coming up? Consider how you could string together EcoCycle, What/So What/Now What, and other Liberating Structures to create a highly dynamic and impactful workshop. If you need some advice or help facilitating, let me know.

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Yours,

Yuval "Strategic Workshop Facilitation For Fun and Profit" Yeret