Kristen shared reflections on her journey forming the team that led a new Outcomes Based Enterprise Planning & Visibility. She shared the things she wished she’d known when the story began.
Kristen’s presentation and slides can be found here.
Drivers for Enterprise Planning
- Slow delivery of value to customers
- Difficulty connecting work to strategy
- High organizational work in progress
- Siloed organizational structure
- Exceptionally high work in progress & misalignment
Challenges Forming The Enterprise Team
- Implemented agile ways of working in technical org
- Needed to go much further
- Required a fresh look at the ways they were working
- Significant lack of trust
- Change hurt & muscles were weak
- Needed some standards – tools, routines & templates
What She Wished She Knew
- To start with the Why
- Really can do more than you think you can
- Get the people right & the planning does itself
- Outcomes, OKRs, Increments – the framework doesn’t matter
- There is no end to the journey, get comfortable in the evolution
- Culture trumps everything & it starts at the top
- She would learn more about herself than she had ever expected
Actions Taken
- Formed the right team
- Formed the Enterprise Visibility Room (EVR) & defined ceremonies
- Invested in the team/s
- Admitted lack of trust, which was the first step, real change started thereafter
- Pressure tested success throughout
- Clearly defined & aligned on what success really looked like
Learnings & Results
- It does not come without a cost, cost of not doing is higher
- Went from presenting status updates to having real strategy debates
- Increased speed to achieving outcomes
- Silos were broken down & voices were heard
- True collaboration emerged, WITHOUT intervention
- Planning got easy
- Framework selected was a guardrail, not a science
- As Sheryl Sanberg said, “Done is better than perfect”.
Kristen concluded by encouraging the audience to be willing to ask themselves the really tough questions. Reminding them that their teams need to be able to say no & ask for help. No matter where you are in the journey, there is always time to reflect, think differently or try something new.
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