You’re ready to transform your organization. You sit down with your team and create a vision of what good looks like. It takes a few rounds of wordsmithing, but eventually you agree. “We want an organization that is customer centric, faster, more innovative, where people are empowered and where we value transparency.”
Sounds good right? Well, no, not really.
Don’t get me wrong. These are good things to strive for. In fact, everyone can get behind this vision. And that’s exactly the problem. Those words aren’t actionable and specific enough when it comes to driving new behavior.
In
my latest article on
principles, I share an alternative that we often use with clients.
Ask yourself, “What does our X look like when we’re doing it well? If it were perfect, it would…”
Examples:
- Authority: Distribute as much authority to the edge of the organization as we can stand
- Structure: Centralize only where it accelerates the teams at the edge
- Strategy: Steer continuously through experimentation
- Information: Create accountability through transparency
- Compensation: Incentivize collaboration across functions
- Authority: Shift our mindset making decisions with “safe-to-try” as the criteria
Tweet
Share