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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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?
#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.
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...