4. Ideas are plentiful...
“If I had asked people what
they wanted, they would have
said faster horses.”
― Henry Ford
“Most businesses die from
indigestion rather than
starvation.”
-- Tom Thomison
co-Founder
HolacracyOne
5. If we’ve got a bad idea,
we need to know now
before we expend all our resources.
6. And if it’s a valuable idea,
What do we
know?
Where is the
Act and Yes?
What do we Observe
know?
Where is the
Act and Yes?
Observe
we need to stop when we’ve delivered
the highest value not when the project plan says
we’re done.
7. Here’s how innovation looks today…. at least with software
How the customer explained it…
How the analyst designed it …
How the programmer wrote it …
What the customer really needed….
8. So how will we recognize the most innovative ideas?
We make team decisions which
often lead to “bloated” actions
where we solve more than is needed.
We hire heroic leaders
We outvote or ignore the to be filters but
contradictory data. unwittingly we setup a
single point of failure.
9. Innovation is grown, not found
We need a model that embraces
this fundamental truth.
10. Iterative & Value Driven
Incremental Work
Distributed Big and
Decisions Visible
11. Linear
Idea
Define Design Build Test Release
First chance to
review.
Oh no!
Iterative & Incremental
Idea Review & Review & Value
Adjust for Adjust for Delivered
Value Value
Define Design Define Design Define Design
Test Build Test Build Test Build
12. Value Driven Work: It takes a team ...
Leaf for
shade
Wall to
Hose for Rope for
keep us
watering binding
safe
Spear for
hunting …to see the value
13. Distributed Decisions:
What are we Establish Point of
even talking Awareness
about?
Who can make Clarify Roles &
this decision? Accountability
We’re going in What are the
the wrong minimally sufficient
direction! conditions to
achieve value?
16. Practically speaking…
Try this: This week is an experiment. Your actions fueled by your best
thinking and expertise will set loose a number of reactions and you have
no idea what will catalyze as a result. It is actually beyond your control.
On Monday morning come to work and look around with wonder at what
your actions created.
Then let it all go.
Now, start again by asking yourself:
“What actions do I take this week
to deliver as much value as I can
given the landscape as it looks right now?”
17. Organizational Patterns
human scale – evolutionary – value driven
Toria Thompson
Thank you!
303-746-3161
toria@organizationalpatterns.com
Editor's Notes
Typical software projects are delivered late and over budget. The end result often does not delivered the hoped for value – whether financial or functional. Because of the tendency to “man overboard” features as the software project nears its end, there often isn’t a sense of being done.
1 - We outvote the one person that has the key perspective that sees something that no one else sees that is needed to keep us moving toward our purpose.2 - We enlist a leader to be the filter but then we have a single point of awareness and a single point of failure.3 – If we’re really advanced we dissect the data as a team and decide what it means. This can be time consuming and frustrating and often leads to “bloated” design.
Processing tensions help us to integrate the minimally sufficient perspectives to keep the organization achieving value.
Boards are visible, moveable, dynamic and maintained by everyone.
- CFO story – pleading with CFO, escalating to CEO didn’t work
