21 min

0055 WWC 12 Steps To Flow - Ch 12 - Small Steps to An Agile Strategy Wrestling With Chaos

    • Management

This podcast covers Chapter 12, “Small Steps To An Agile Strategy” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. The authors start the chapter by stating a good Flow workplace is one that challenges the idea of big strategy and grand plans. The new method is to build strategy from small steps. How to achieve that will be covered in this chapter. The first problem pointed out is that the core elements that people focus on in strategy and planning are necessary but nowhere near sufficient for success. This necessary-but-not-sufficient problem is typical of the digital world. Many intangible factors, often intangible, have a significant influence but are difficult for traditional strategist to grasp. An old style of marketing is used, e.g., "Build the platform and market the hell out of it." The key problem is the platform is seen as a technology stack rather than a relationship nexus. So why are the issues associated with platforms so interesting to the Flow frame-of-mind? First, platforms invented modern agility, providing the ability to roam into any space choosen with a lot of activity taking place on the network along with having the ability to update with high-frequency and low-cost. Also, products are digital, which means there is no conventional supply chain to manage. Second platforms are almost impossible to plan and this is really critical because execution needs a huge amount of iteration and a commitment to real-time executive direction. For example nobody can say what it will cost to be successful at developing the ecosystem of third-party actors. Consequently, platforms force designers to take small steps. These hundreds of incremental steps requires Flow. Business often gives the impression that there is one big solution, e.g., a new platform, or a single answer to complex problems. This is just wrong. Success in High-Performance Teams In delivery terms, the economy is shifting towards small. Good leaders recognize this and see the critical gains lie in the margins, in the detail. That's why in Flow, work units are only ever a maximum of two days long. These are the micro-units where you can get 1% gains to scale up into something significant. Interestingly enough, incremental changes that scale can apply to strategy as well as to delivery. The short cycle times of two days or less force people to interact more which is good for both productivity and quality. The authors feel this is superior to long planning cycles which can drift away from providing the value required to meet the customer's needs. Small Steps to a Big Platform One problem with setting digital strategy is that many people get the core ideas of agility and scale wrong. With the digital transformation the dominates the agile world companies seek network effects where there is little disruption caused by the platform. The stability or lack of disruption by the platforms is supposedly created through: - open APIs - two-sided or multisided markets - network effects - cloud infrastructure The authors view this is flawed because: 1. Great platforms exist without having an open API 2. The idea of two-sided and multisided markets feel superfluous 3. Network effects are powerful but rare, e.g., Facebook 4. There's nothing special about Cloud services, all companies have access to Cloud infrastructure The real power of platforms lies in the ecosystems that grow around the successful ones. This is a real nightmare for traditional strategists because success lies at the other end of intangible investments in relationships, promotion, content, and likability. Services with no allegiance to the platform can exist on that platform thrive and do well and benefit the platform service at the same time, for example book arbitrage on Amazon services. Customers may pay more after successful in finding what they need. The successful com

This podcast covers Chapter 12, “Small Steps To An Agile Strategy” of “12 Steps to Flow: The New Framework for Business Agility,” by Haydn Shaughnessy and Fin Goulding, developers of the internationally acclaimed workshop, Flow Academy. The authors start the chapter by stating a good Flow workplace is one that challenges the idea of big strategy and grand plans. The new method is to build strategy from small steps. How to achieve that will be covered in this chapter. The first problem pointed out is that the core elements that people focus on in strategy and planning are necessary but nowhere near sufficient for success. This necessary-but-not-sufficient problem is typical of the digital world. Many intangible factors, often intangible, have a significant influence but are difficult for traditional strategist to grasp. An old style of marketing is used, e.g., "Build the platform and market the hell out of it." The key problem is the platform is seen as a technology stack rather than a relationship nexus. So why are the issues associated with platforms so interesting to the Flow frame-of-mind? First, platforms invented modern agility, providing the ability to roam into any space choosen with a lot of activity taking place on the network along with having the ability to update with high-frequency and low-cost. Also, products are digital, which means there is no conventional supply chain to manage. Second platforms are almost impossible to plan and this is really critical because execution needs a huge amount of iteration and a commitment to real-time executive direction. For example nobody can say what it will cost to be successful at developing the ecosystem of third-party actors. Consequently, platforms force designers to take small steps. These hundreds of incremental steps requires Flow. Business often gives the impression that there is one big solution, e.g., a new platform, or a single answer to complex problems. This is just wrong. Success in High-Performance Teams In delivery terms, the economy is shifting towards small. Good leaders recognize this and see the critical gains lie in the margins, in the detail. That's why in Flow, work units are only ever a maximum of two days long. These are the micro-units where you can get 1% gains to scale up into something significant. Interestingly enough, incremental changes that scale can apply to strategy as well as to delivery. The short cycle times of two days or less force people to interact more which is good for both productivity and quality. The authors feel this is superior to long planning cycles which can drift away from providing the value required to meet the customer's needs. Small Steps to a Big Platform One problem with setting digital strategy is that many people get the core ideas of agility and scale wrong. With the digital transformation the dominates the agile world companies seek network effects where there is little disruption caused by the platform. The stability or lack of disruption by the platforms is supposedly created through: - open APIs - two-sided or multisided markets - network effects - cloud infrastructure The authors view this is flawed because: 1. Great platforms exist without having an open API 2. The idea of two-sided and multisided markets feel superfluous 3. Network effects are powerful but rare, e.g., Facebook 4. There's nothing special about Cloud services, all companies have access to Cloud infrastructure The real power of platforms lies in the ecosystems that grow around the successful ones. This is a real nightmare for traditional strategists because success lies at the other end of intangible investments in relationships, promotion, content, and likability. Services with no allegiance to the platform can exist on that platform thrive and do well and benefit the platform service at the same time, for example book arbitrage on Amazon services. Customers may pay more after successful in finding what they need. The successful com

21 min