Transformation & Innovation
Ex·pe·ri·ence Velocity
Reinvent your operating model to win in the digital world
The advent of digital has rendered the business landscape unrecognizable to most. There is the old world and there is the new world. Most companies are stuck in the old world.
1. Meeting customer needs...
is more important than ever, but most companies put all their focus and effort on generating overly long, detailed and mostly static requirements, specifications and plans. Requirements (in whichever form they take) and customer needs are not the same thing. Companies who don’t internalize this distinction are going to struggle to compete.
2. Being fast and adaptable...
is a core competitive advantage but most companies are slow by design. They are run to minimize risk, not maximize speed and opportunities. They favor staying on legacy but familiar platforms. Information and data lives within silos and is not shared. Decision-making power lies in the hands of the few. This design is a vestige of a bygone era when failure was expensive and deliberation a virtue. Slow and steady won’t win this race.
3. Having a strong talent bench...
is key to digital excellence, but most companies’ learning and development programs address only 10% of their employees’ learning needs. They invest disproportionately in formal training, while numerous studies show that 90% of effective learning happens while learning from others (20%) and actually doing the work (70%). The result is more certification theater than actual talent development.
We’re a different kind of consulting firm, defined by our ability to help our clients:
1. Build the right things
(noun) relating to the customer
the way that something happens and how it makes them feel
How does an explorer get to the new world? There is no map. They have a north star, a lot of gumption, and a deep belief there is another side to reach.
We live and operate in a digital age. The new world is too complicated and fast-changing for command and control (i.e. the old world) to work. In the absence of a long, detailed plan, how should companies organize people today? Like a seafarer who relies on Polaris, a company needs to set a North Star.
The North Star must be informed by customer needs. This requires actually going out and talking to the people and figuring out what problems they’re trying to solve with your product. Once a company has set its North Star metric, it can select the levers that it hypothesizes will move the North Star metric. These levers in turn determine the roadmap of experiments, ideas and bets that the company will undertake to move the North Star metric.
The North Star metric serves as the guiding light for a company's digital roadmap, providing focus on what matters most for growth. It is the means by which unmet customer needs are aligned to specific value levers.
From “command and control” to being guided by a North Star, a company moves from ‘exploit’ to ‘explore’ mode. Iterative exploration, embracing speed, failure, learning, and rapid adaptation: these are required to explore the problem and validate solutions. When the world changes as fast as it does, organizations need to be just as quick to experiment and adapt.
The only certainty is that the world will change.
2. Build the right ways
(verb) relating to the company
to have something happen to you
Rigid organizational structures beget rigid mindsets and cultures which beget rigid software. They’re tankers when they should be fast and agile sailboats. How then, does a tanker transform into a sailboat?
Conway’s Law states that organizations produce systems that mirror their internal communications structure. Research has consistently found that when teams are organized into separate departments that each act as functional units, these teams produce software with a similar fragmented structure. Conversely, teams with strong communication and cross-functional collaboration develop more cohesive and integrated products. In short, organizations tend to ship their org charts.
The first step towards building a more agile organization then is to build a structure that’s actually aligned with what the company is shipping. This is known as the Inverse Conway Manoeuvre, or as we like to call it, the Yawnoc Manoeuvre.
Changing organization structures requires having the right technology platforms in place, supporting workflows that enable high-quality information flow, cross-functional collaboration and daily learning. Breaking down silos between teams will not only enable better workflows, but it also provides a better view of the customer across the end-to-end journey so that everyone can make better data-driven decisions. Technology platforms in an organization should make it easier for teams to continually develop and release digital innovations to users.
Market leadership belongs to those who can pivot swiftly, learn continuously, and collaborate seamlessly.
3. Build the right capabilities
(noun) relating to the employee
(the process of getting) knowledge or skill from doing
Companies stubbornly sticking to the old ways will ultimately crash into the proverbial iceberg, and the market moves on without them. How does one avoid this fate?
Formal training will get teams only so far; it is short-term, expensive, and is often disconnected to real-world applications. In order to transform their capabilities, companies must learn to operate differently. Capabilities need to be constantly and intentionally developed through learning from others (i.e. coaching & mentorship) and hands-on training.
This is best done through immersion. Take your employees out of their current routine and place them in an intensive, hands-on environment that allows them to do real work — not just exercises. Experienced coaches guide teams through their learning journey. These coaches provide expertise in software engineering practices, Agile methodologies, DevOps principles, and more, helping teams to adopt these practices in their work.
There is no better way for teams to gain tacit knowledge and move to a future state than via learning by doing. Working on real-world outcomes and developing skills through repetition will accelerate cultural and organizational transformation. No formal training programs needed ahead of time; teams learn the skills they need as they go, greatly increasing teams’ speed, quality and ability to deliver value to customers.
Individuals and small teams now possess an unprecedented capacity to create impact.