Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
Scaling Companies Up Requires Some of The Startup Phase Scrappiness
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Founders know that scaling their company to Unicorn status requires extending beyond a singular focus. Launching a product extension. Complementing your established Go-to-market motion. Entering new markets (Different ICP, Geography, etc. ) Often, companies approach these extensions using the same processes they use for their established Products/Markets. They approach a new product opportunity with unwarranted conviction. They go into a new market using established/scaled revenue operations. They implement new motions using "big design up front" They often spread too thin by working on multiple extensions simultaneously. They work on them using the same processes and structures that are tuned for "efficiency" and "margin expansion" That often turns out to be an expensive mistake. Because unlike your established Product/Market, these extensions are often bets. They often require multiple departments to collaborate tightly to find the extension's Product-Market-Motion Fit. They require an experimentation mindset (like the same company had in its pre-PMF days...) Whether it's new leaders brought in to "scale" the company, or the same leaders who were around during the initial leaner days, running a dual operating system - efficient and scrappy side by side - is hard. I find it helpful to be explicit about your portfolio of activities - which can benefit from efficiency-focused operating systems, and need agile scrappiness. Here's one technique that can help you improve organizational traction on these strategic bets:
NOTE: This post is inspired by a Science of Selling Podcast episode on Extending to Multi-Product Selling. Yours, |
Scaling w/ Agility
Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.
Should you focus on mastering organizational traction or on establishing portfolio agility? Let me tell you a secret: In my experience, mastering organization traction involves realizing you have a portfolio of investments you’re managing. So actually the paths converge… The difference is that mastering organizational traction extends beyond the IT/Product world. It intercepts business initiatives before becoming mandates for the technology organization. It also manages non-digital...
“Agile is so great we need to use it for EVERYTHING” “Agile is so much overhead, we stopped using it for ANYTHING” Are you also trying to navigate what to do with Agile? Whether it’s worth the overhead? After years of helping a diverse group of organizations figure out where and how to use agile methods, here's what I've learned... If you want the TL;DR version - Agile has the potential to shine when …. There’s enough risk and uncertainty to justify the overhead of frequent feedback loops....
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...