Creating innovation engines organizational patterns ver 2.0

Creating Team BasedInnovation Engines

Toria Thompson,Organizational Patterns

Current Paradigm: innovation requires...

The right people

The right map

The right culture

But…

There are no maps, only a compass.

There are no roads, only a vague idea of North.

And you can’t wait until conditions are right

you must act now.

“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 Thomisonco-Founder

HolacracyOne

Ideas are plentiful...

If we’ve got a bad idea,

we need to know nowbefore we expend all our resources.

What do we know?

Where is the Yes?Act and

Observe

What do we know?

Where is the Yes?Act and

Observe

And if it’s a valuable idea,

we need to stop when we’ve delivered the highest value not when the project plan says

we’re done.

How the customer explained it…

How the analyst designed it …

How the programmer wrote it …

Here’s how innovation looks today…. at least with software

What the customer really needed….

So how will we recognize the most innovative ideas?

We outvote or ignore the contradictory data.

We hire heroic leaders to be filters but

unwittingly we setup a single point of failure.

We make team decisions which often lead to “bloated” actions

where we solve more than is needed.

Innovation is grown, not found

We need a model that embraces this fundamental truth.

Value Driven Work

Distributed Decisions

Big and Visible

Iterative & Incremental

Idea

Idea

Define

Design

Build

Test

Release

Linear

Iterative & Incremental

Design

Build

Test

Define

Review & Adjust for

Value

Design

Build

Test

Define

Review & Adjust for

Value

Design

Build

Test

Define

First chance to review. Oh no!

Value Delivered

Done

?

Done

?

It takes a team ...

…to see the value

Hose for watering

Spear for hunting

Leaf for shade

Wall to keep us

safe

Rope for binding

Value Driven Work:

Distributed Decisions:

Clarify Roles & Accountability

Establish Point of Awareness

What are the minimally sufficient

conditions to achieve value?

What are we even talking

about?

Who can make this decision?

We’re going in the wrong direction!

Big and Visible Planning and Action

The best teams know…

Every action is an experiment

with only one of two outcomes.

Did it move us closer to our goal or farther away?

Each iteration is a chance to begin again.

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?”

Practically speaking…

Organizational Patterns human scale – evolutionary – value driven

Toria Thompson303-746-3161

toria@organizationalpatterns.com

Thank you!