The World's Preeminent Strategy Expert's Simple, Proven Way to Design Strategy
Applying Design Thinking to Strategy, Tech/Sales vs. Product, and the Missing OKR Person
Welcome to the latest edition of my newsletter, the Upstream Full-Stack Journal, where we go up- and downstream to explore the full Value Delivery stack, from Strategy through OKRs, Product Management, and Agile Systems of Delivery.
In this edition:
Diving deep into one the one of the simplest and most effective Strategy Frameworks
Tech- & Sales-centric management sees Product Management as a cause of organizational bloat & dysfunction (!)
The importance of the Key Result Owner to OKRs
Let’s dig in!
A Deep Dive Into the “Playing to Win” Strategy Framework
Over the past several months, I’ve broken down the “Playing to Win” Strategy framework, what I would consider to be one of the most powerful yet simplest, most accessible, and actionable strategy frameworks I’ve ever seen across three articles:
The “Playing to Win” Framework — A Global Strategy Expert’s Proven Method
This is the first part of the three-part series, introducing the framework and it’s success.
“What makes the Playing to Win strategy framework unique is that it neither over-indexes on Creativity, nor Analysis, but skillfully weaves back and forth between Divergent and Convergent thinking modes to achieve creative innovationtempered by scientific hypothesis and testing rigor.”
Read here on my personal blog:
Or here on Medium:
The “Playing to Win” Framework, Part II — The Strategy Process Map
In the second part of the three-part series, I dig deep into the Strategy Process Map that takes advantage of Design Thinking principles to innovate in strategy design, yet ground in empirical testing.
“Ideally, you would step through the Strategy Process Map with a diverse, cross-functional group of people representing a wide range of specialties, experience, and expertise — of course, not only the executive leadership sponsor would need to be involved throughout, but also the middle management team responsible for rolling out and managing to the strategy, as well as the people downstream who would actually be making choices on the front lines daily to “activate” the strategy.”
Read here on my personal blog:
https://michaelgoitein.com/2023/02/06/the-playing-to-win-framework-part-ii-the-strategy-process-map/
Or here on Medium:
The “Playing to Win” Framework — Part III — The Strategy Choice Cascade
In the third article in this three-part series, we investigate the five choices at the heart of great strategy design.
“When strategy teams put more effort into the heart of their strategy, clearly defining well-matched sets of Where to Play & How to Win choices, that alone would radically reduce risk and put them ahead of the competition.”
Read here on my personal blog:
Or here on Medium:
Product Management a cause of organizational dysfunction?
In a recent opinion piece on Medium entitled “CEOs Writing Three Envelopes,” former Apple exec Jean-Louis Gassée shared his opinion on the multiple internal and external forces on big tech companies that lead to their eventual downfall and inevitable mass layoffs.
Interestingly, Gassée feels Product Managers are partly to blame:
"On paper, the role looks logical, almost unavoidable. In theory, the Product Manager coordinates, harmonizes. There are market requirements, engineering feasibility, supply-chain availability and financial considerations to meld together in the evolving management of a product project.
Very logical, orderly, looks could (sic) on a Board Presentation slide.
What could go wrong?
Human nature.
Who’s really responsible, who gets or loses meaning?
My own — and not necessarily shared belief — is the engineering lead ought to stay in charge and be judged on their project’s overall fitness to the company’s business.
"Injecting a Product Manager’s ego and lesser technical knowledge in the mix only muddies the waters."
Although Gassée does admit his point of view “…is “an admittedly naive perspective,” I wanted to point out that Jean-Louis (a hard-core Tech guy), was an executive under Gil Amelio (a hard-core Sales guy), not Steve Jobs, before the Bill Campbell Client-centric, Product-, and empowered-team-focused era.
See Gassée’s full Medium post here, and my view on LinkedIn here.
The Importance of the Key Result Owner to the Objective and Key Results (OKR) Framework
This piece from Paul Niven over at OKRsTraining.com is an often-overlooked but essential reminder to anyone using the OKR framework.
Niven clearly lays out the Key Result Owner’s five accountabilities:
Determining tracking cadence
Tracking progress
Leading check-in meetings
Sharing updates above
Removing roadblocks
What I find interesting is many people rush through an OKR implementation, stall, crash and burn, and blame OKRs.
From my observation, not having the right people in the necessary roles – OKR Champion and Key Results Owner being two of the most important – is one of the major downfalls.
This is something we’ll get into more in the future, but I believe you can scale with People and Cadence, but you can’t scale with Process Alone.
(This is one of the fundamental mistakes people make in assuming the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) alone will solve all their organizational delivery dysfunctions.)
Read Paul Niven’s full piece on the Key Result Owner here.
That’s it for this edition!
Join me next time as we continue to go Up- and Downstream to explore the Full Value Delivery Stack.
