a big learning the last year is the degree to which your most passionate team members will *expect* leaders/managers to coherently frame strategy

this is where "autonomy" often hits a snag. Leaders assume it means "bottom up" planning. But that isn't it ... (1/n)
Writing up 3 vague bullets on a "vision" slide is easy. Also easy is planning out each and every chunk of work for the year.

Much harder is detailing a strategy that leaves room for creativity and agency ... but is also coherent, backed by evidence, and is opinionated ... (2/n)
Opinionated? Isn't that bad?

I don't think so when it is opinionated at the right level. Passionate problem solvers want to know that their company has a perspective and doesn't want to be everything/anything.

"Um hey, so what are your OKRs" doesn't land. (3/n)
These team members can sniff out the drift into mediocrity from a mile away. So the trick is going beyond a surface level of context.

I guess my point is that ppl crave smart context over shallow attempts at promoting self-organization (4/end)

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More from @johncutlefish

6 Dec
a differentiation that many teams get wrong:

time-based goals
vs.
persistent models

let's dig in.

left: time-based goals
right: persistent model

why is this important? ... (1/n)
* PS, school example took about 120 seconds. apologies
quarterly goals like OKRs often cloud the actual underpinning model ... the beliefs ... the assumptions ... the mental model for value creation.

spending time on understanding the persistent model makes time-based goals MUCH easier and gets us out of the factory model (2/n)
Even something is "bad" as this mind map (it took a team 5 minutes) ... can help build a common vocabulary.

with each passing quarter you will focus on parts of the puzzle. and you may revise the model. but even this rough first pass gets us started (3/n)
Read 4 tweets
6 Dec
the problem with distinctions like "discover vs deliver" is that they cloud the real issue.

IMHO...solve what constitutes a team and their decision/mandate scope first, and many of the other problems work themselves out.

Why? (1/n)
...take a team arguing about discovery vs. delivery.

What they *really* are arguing about is the clash of engineering team incentives, product manager incentives, and design team incentives.

....hmm...how do we keep THEM shipping while WE figure out the 'right things' (2/n)
design wants more time to do a good job, PdM is being pestered about how they'll solve the problem (and SHIP), and eng is told SHIP.

they proxy this dogmatic debates about what constitutes discovery and delivery, who does what, and how they can do MORE AT ONCE. So...(3/n)
Read 4 tweets
4 Dec
Thread'o'threads

Friend: "Maybe you would have finished the book if you weren't tweeting all the time"

Not all wrong.

1/13 A short lesson in thinking about horizons/scope

Read 13 tweets
15 Nov
It is about this time of year I recommend a “so what if we build nothing” exercise. It is always fascinating.

Gather a cross-functional group and pose the question “ok, so what if we stop building new stuff. We go into full maintenance mode. What happens?” 1/n
Initially ppl will be confused. They’ll joke about losing their job. Once the get over that, they get curious and start imagining.

Typically I prep with some kind of monthly/quarterly “scoreboard” or dashboard. “ok, what happens to this quarter after quarter?” 2/n
What numbers go up? Go down? More or less support cases? Fewer purchases? Fewer upgrades? Higher cost of acquisition? Lower tension? More churn? A competitor starts to creep up? What stagnates? When?

“Let’s start creating a timeline...” 3/n
Read 6 tweets
9 Nov
#wardleymapping fans. I was about to make this list myself, but figured it would be more fun as a group activity. Care to add some?

WM help(s/ed) us decide to __________ instead of _________________ .
e.g.

change a team's mission from acting as a specialist walled garden to trying to spread that expertise across the company
use vendors for X,Y, and Z, and then spin up an internal team to act as a center of excellence for navigating those vendors/tools and abstracting the provider from the company.
Read 4 tweets
4 Nov
A quick overview of a workshop we are running at @Amplitude_HQ with prospects/customers. It hits all the angles. We use @MiroHQ

1/n First we dig into the product promise and path to sustainable, differentiated growth...
2/n Then we take a quick look at competitive. Personally, I think that to "ignore the competition" it is important to understand the competition first. So we look at that...
3/n With that context, shift a bit to learn a super high level form of journey mapping. First we start with using an emotion wheel to get people ... well ... thinking about humans. And then we do a 30,000ft exercise with 5 key narratives...
Read 9 tweets

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