The New Year is one month old, and the pressure to set and achieve meaningful goals comes with it. However, having a straightforward method to deliver on those goals can take time and effort.
Following my last blog post on the three-step approach to planning, the method to deliver the vision can be contentious with rapid changes. Our organisations are facing increasingly complex and dynamic challenges.
There are many ways to plan. Each method works for something, and it all depends. For me, the determiner is the dominant culture in your organisation. It has to fit its purpose.
In this blog post, we will explore an iterative planning method inspired by the ideas of Strategic Doing - Ten Skills for Agile Leadership. Their work has inspired me to adopt the Strategic Doing approach in my environment and workspaces.
The Strategic Doing method
Strategic Doing is like an iterative planning method. It is an adaptive and flexible approach to achieving strategic goals. It differs from traditional planning methods, which are often rigid and inflexible.Traditional planning is the default method in many organisations where a top-down hierarchical structure is prevalent. That said, it does not mean the conventional planning method does not work. When the parameters are defined, it will. This method will be another blog post where I will delve into the reasons behind it.
Let's continue with the Strategic Doing method. The framework allows continuous testing, feedback and iteration to improve the outcome. Continuous testing is about testing your assumption. With feedback, you validate your assumptions. You can pivot or persevere based on the feedback and adapt to improve your outcome.
Why do you need all these? It all has to do with VUCA. What's VUCA?
VUCA is an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, which you find in a complex business environment now. It refers to the volatility of the speed and unpredictability of change. Change can mean anything that affects or impact your plans.
Constant changes make for uncertainty due to the need for more clarity or predictability in the future. The lack of predictability makes everything look complex. The complexity increases the more the number of interconnected elements and relationships in a business system and environment.
Ambiguity is when you cannot anchor a definition and a clear understanding of a situation or issue. You start scratching your head. You ask more questions, and there is no one answer to the complexity of the change.
If you have worked in software engineering and product development, iterative planning is the norm. You plan, design, implement, test and evaluate as a cycle. This short cycle gives you feedback from your customers or environment to improve, learn, or pivot. You enhance your success by adjusting to unknowns incrementally until you deliver the outcome.
In other arenas, say business continuity planning, what is on paper may be different when you activate it. You will not know what you have yet to learn because information may not be forthcoming as expected on paper. A Cynefin framework explains this better. That's a future post.
Anyway, with traditional planning, you rely on detailed planning and sticking to the plan. You don't change the plan. You keep persevering with it because higher authorities have mandated and approved it.
That said, iterative planning is rare in most organisations. Still, with its focus on continuous testing, feedback, and iteration, it is well-suited to dealing with the challenges and complex challenges of the VUCA world. The iterative planning method allows organisations to continuously adapt and respond to changes, increasing their chances of success.
Iterative planning - Strategic Doing style
The Strategic Doing framework has four key questions:What could we do?
You start by identifying and listing what skills, capabilities, connections and information you and your team have control and influence over. In Strategic Doing terms, we call these assets.Next, you take stock of all your assets and brainstorm possibilities and options with them. You will be surprised by a list of possible solutions, answers, and new ideas.
What should we do?
You evaluate each possible solution and consider which one or two you want to pursue. You score your solutions and opportunities by impact and ease of achieving them individually. The one that could have a significant impact and is relatively easy to implement is something you choose.Next, you decide on some success metrics. The metrics are like indicators that will help you track your progress toward the outcome. If you don't have any metrics, you drive with blindfolds.
What will we do?
When you have decided on a solution and the metrics to track your path, you align your plan with a SMART statement. The statement is a specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound declaration of purpose.You break down that purpose into a series of events with deadlines. These events will be your guideposts for you to track your activity. Have up to three events.
Choose the first event as your first guidepost in the series. Use the first guidepost to create action items of who delivers what by when. We will get to the next guidepost after you reach the first one. That's it.
What's our 30/30?
The last question is where you will review what you have done, and learned, what adjustments you might need to make and what next steps you need to take to accomplish your goal at an agreed interval.The idea for 30/30 is to agree with your team on how you will track the action items from your guidepost. You set a date where you will review what has happened or achieved in the last 30 days and new action items you need to do in the next 30 days.
The team and you decide how you set the review interval. The interval can be seven days, 14 days or 30 days, depending on the complexity of the action. Generally, 30 days interval is a reasonable milestone to review your plans.
These 30/30 repeats until you reach your vision or goal.
Conclusion
Using an iterative planning method, you can achieve your goals faster with a lower risk of failure. It also allows for a higher chance of success and the ability to adapt to complex changes. You can apply this to various challenging goals, from launching a new product to implementing a new process in a company.Anything that has no one way of achieving it will benefit from this. As I have said, this is an adaptive and flexible approach to achieving goals that you can apply to various situations. By defining the problem or goal first and using the Strategic Doing method to iterate, you can increase your chances of success while reducing risk.
Please try the iterative planning method and share your experiences.