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.
Draining The Goals Swamp
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Reader Jonathan asked for some more color on the OKR swamp... Remember the Fire Swamp from Princess Bride? (If you don't, RUN to watch the movie. And consider this spoiler alert - and snooze this email until you're back) Navigating your OKRs often feels like the Fire Swamp. There are so many OKRs that they are all stuck - like the standing, dark, moist water in the Fire Swamp. The exercise of creating them involves wordsmithing agony that reminds you of a Battle of Wits with a sicilian... Working on some of these OKRs feels like Lightning Sand - you sink in the details, and the cross-department work quicker than lightning. While working towards your OKRs, you get surprised by actions you take not working, as well as realizing you're not even working on the right deliverables. It makes you think of the infamous Fire Spurts. Some OKRs are of unmanageable size - being too abstract and unclear. Kind of like ROUS (Rodents of unusual size) And you have to fight all these swamp features/creatures while handling day-to-day work. (At least the antagonists in the movie were smart enough to stay out of the swamp, allowing Wesley and the Princess to Focus!) How do you overcome it? Through true love, of course :-) And that's actually how leaders and their teams most often overcome the OKR Swamp - they somehow slug through it. There's a smarter way, though. It does require courage and focus. Remember that the point is alignment around outcomes, not perfection. (So be thoughtful about how much time you spend on drafting and confirming OKRs) To say No (to too many OKRs, or everything being an OKR). To plan for surprises (through continuous iteration and adaptation) Focus on finishing one at a time. (Through ruthless prioritization and tradeoffs) Have a great day! Go drain some OKR swamps... Yuval What if you had a trail map helping you navigate the OKR Swamp? Mastering Organizational Outcomes is a practical email course designed to help leaders of scale-up and midsized organizations break free from scattered priorities and bring organizational flow, focus, and clarity. Use it to upgrade your company operating system to achieve traction as you scale. Check it out, or use this quick link to subscribe. |
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.
Product development concepts come in handy every time you're developing something. Whether that thing is software, product, or even a point of view. The first sentence in this email is a point of view (POV). I want this point of view to be effective - I want people to understand what I mean, be intrigued by it, take action, and hopefully see me as a thought leader / expert in this space that they'll want to follow / listen to more. It took me a while to develop this point of view. To carve a...
Context is King You’ve probably encountered this term in the context of AI. You won’t get far with AI, even with amazing prompting techniques, if AI doesn’t have the right context. Many people focus on the Data aspect of context – what’s in our CRM, in our collaboration tools, in our ERP, in any of our vertical systems. Another interesting aspect is the intent – what are we trying to achieve? What is our strategy? What problems are we focused on? Who are the players? Some of that information...
Hey Reader, Before you fix teams, fix the system they operate in. Most organizations focus their improvement efforts at the team, program, or product level while maintaining the same organizational operating system—how they make decisions, fund work, and measure success. These teams might be using the latest and greatest processes (Agile, Product Model, Lean Startup, take your pick) but they still need to manage countless dependencies. The funding and GTM processes are still following classic...