Weeknotes 469
I did:
Mo’ problems
This week seemed to be mostly about asking, “What kind of problem is this?” Is it a product problem (getting consensus with stakeholders), a procurement problem (comparing supplier options), a process problem (are things happening in the right order). And this stuff happened:
- Wrote a product strategy workshop for product teams, and an accompanying presentation for leaders. The main point being how having a product strategy helps teams achieve high alignment and high autonomy.
- Did more scenario mapping to look at the effect decisions will have in the future.
- Saw a quick demo of a user story writing chatbot.
- Used copilot to write some prompts for copilot for an upcoming workshop.
- Had an interesting chat with a product manager who is bringing together a bunch of organisational functions to productise them.
- Talked about progress reporting and how the best reporting enables teams to improve, and how that requires a whole load of enabling work to make successful.
- Started designing a metrics tree.
- Had a few different conversations with different leaders generally around the theme of data being a vital asset that creates a competitive advantage. I remember trying to have conversations like that with charity leaders who just didn’t get it. It’s so good to work with people who do.
The numbers
Another three-day week, but:
- 40 tasks completed.
- 520 minutes in meetings.
I read:
Balanced metrics
I like balance. I like the idea of making sure one metric isn’t over-optimised by measuring things that might be seen as competing, e.g., speed and quality. Troy’s metrics are:
- Do the right stuff (valuable)
- Do it right (quality)
- Do it fast (speed)
- Do it predictably (consistency)
- Do it lots (quantity)
- Keep doing it (resilience)
AI and assessment reform options: A look at the scoreboard
Jason is right, educational assessment definitely requires a rethink. “Knowing stuff” changes significantly if you have a book in front of you, it changes significantly again when you have lots of books via the Internet, and again when you have AI to summarise all those books. Assessing for retained information is becoming increasingly out of date. Maybe don’t assess knowing stuff, assess applying knowledge wherever it came from.
I thought:
The promise of product
Organisations invest in products, product managers and product thinking because of the promise they make. That promise is greater growth and value, at lower cost, at scale. Agile showed us better ways of building software. DevOps showed us better ways of releasing and maintaining software. It’s product’s job to make that software valuable (but of course product is more than just software).
Definition changed
We’re in the post-digital era where technology and the Internet are a ubiquitous part of life. The expectations aren’t raised anymore, they are mundane. Unfortunately, most organisations haven’t caught up yet.
More capitalism
I saw someone’s post on LinkedIn about their model for organisational culture change that leads to higher performance and more business value. It got me thinking, is culture change all about working harder and being good little capitalists? Surely there’s more to it? Can’t we change culture to be more humane, more fair and equal, healthier, just because it’s morally the right thing to do?
OKRs aren’t about goals
OKRs do one thing really well, they tell you if your strategy is working.
They are feedback loops to tell you if what you decided to do is actually achieving what you wanted, they don’t help you decide what to do (that’s what strategy is for).
Objectives express the goal you decided, and Key Results provide the signals that tell you whether your goal has been achieved, but nothing about OKRs helps you decide what your goals should be. You have to do that work before writing OKRs.
Choice or luck
The more I think in bets, the more I see ‘choice and luck’ everywhere. Recruiting? You need to figure out how much of a candidates achievement were luck and how much were because of choices they made. Product strategy? You need to figure out which factors are within your control so you can make choices about them and which are outside of your control and are just luck.
Change
I never used to believe that leaders had that much power to shape change in an organisation, I always thought change happens bottom-up, but I’m starting to change my mind. Recently I’ve thought that the number of conversations leaders have with people below their pay grade and outside their reporting line is a leading indicator of culture change, but not that leaders could actually change the culture.
More recently, I’ve started to believe more and more that how much an org changes depends on how much leaders change. If leaders maintain the status quo power dynamic of ‘leaders do the thinking and make the decisions, teams do the work’, then it doesn’t matter how much restructuring of teams happens, nothing much is actually going to change.