Text originally published on Lambda3 Blog
I'm rehearsing to present Lambda3's Strategic Planning learning process, and how we're trying to transform it into an Agile experience. At the last Agile Brazil , in BH, a topic that seemed to be trending was the relationship between Organizational Strategy and Agility in general. The conversations I had there were very good and I decided to talk a little about how we've been working at the company since 2017.
Business Agility has become the new market frontier for companies that want to discuss the future of agility. Allan Shalloway even describes this new moment as The Third Decade of Agility . In his explanation, the first decade was characterized by learning about how to execute agility in teams, with a strong focus on individual certifications and day-to-day practices for teams, back in the early 2000s. From 2010 onwards, the focus was on how to execute agility in multiple teams, whether product or portfolio teams – and the celebration of scaling methods . Here, we saw the great global emphasis on seeking certification models and more prescriptive methods for multiple teams, in an attempt to achieve agility and bring Agile to the PMO, generating a series of problems – including the failure of countless Agile experiences in large organizations – a subject that is worthy of a future podcast.
Today, we are entering the third decade of agility, amid a conceptual bifurcation between Enterprise Agility and the famous Business Agility . In these concepts – which I will not explain here – it is important that Strategy and Execution are even more interconnected, enabling experimentation and rapid response to the market. Thus, in 2017, we began our journey to look at Lambda3's strategy in an agile way.
As a company, we grew in a very organic and decentralized way until 2017 (around 60 people). In general, there was no formalized internal strategy and planning structure until then, but it was not like we were crazy about the company – more or less. The way we made decisions and planned the company until then was quite informal: one day, at lunch, we decided to buy a company. The next day, together with the team, we decided on the sponsorship direction for the semester's events. There was always an unwritten vision for the company, and there was always a direction that was shared with everyone: to do the best work we could, to influence and change the technology market for the better.
As we grew, and through feedback from the team, it was getting harder and harder to maintain cohesion of this vision across all teams in the company, as we ended up relying solely on word of mouth and day-to-day experience to bring alignment. There wasn't even a Culture Book , like Valve's , to bring everyone to the same understanding of the company. Well, it was time to change that, as our vision for the company's growth became clearer.
At this point, we called our long-time friend and business partner Luiz Parzianello , from Surya . First challenge: We are all agile professionals at Lambda3, with years of experience… do we really need an external facilitator to decide how to organize the company? The answer: of course we do! And Parzianello worked with us to help us with this organizational transition. The worst thing that can happen is a team of facilitators and consultants trying to get somewhere WITHOUT a facilitator – perhaps the greatest paradox of our modern life.
The work began by being divided into two major stages:
Who we are
Where we want to be.
Finding Who We Are was very much a discussion about our principles, values and positioning. Putting on paper what we already do in our day-to-day, so that it becomes even more powerful. Influenced by Ismail Salim, from the book Exponential Organizations , our purpose since the creation of the company has not changed, it has only become clearer: To positively influence the technology market, expanding its transformative potential . We can translate into one sentence what we have been doing since the first day of the company's formation: To act in countless aspects of the market, bringing a vision of quality, management and diversity that allows us to impact the market, our profession and communities in a positive way. Our hypothesis is that it is possible to build a company that enables the transformation of people and businesses.
Having done this, we had to discuss how this purpose translates into what we do, and what pillars form our worldview: perhaps the most in-depth discussion we have had in all these years of business. It is important to note that this discussion was held only with the partners for two reasons: it had never been done before, and our understanding that this is our commitment to all people in the company.
In concrete terms, what we did was find the pillars on which the company is based, and understand what they mean for our business. We simply explained what we already work on in our day-to-day. With that, we defined 6 pillars (does that seem like a lot? We don't think so):
As a company, we believe that our ability to produce value for the market and the technology community involves the following value drivers:
Result
Results allow us to invest in better working conditions and new products and services, impacting even more people and companies through our work.
Clients
Through our work with Clients, Lambda3 is able to achieve its mission of existence.
People
People are the main force in generating value. We believe that complete and engaged individuals are our greatest competitive advantage.
Technology
Our passion for technology and focus on technical excellence is what sets us apart from the rest.
Market
The technology market is our field of activity, and our way of looking for new clients and professionals
Community
Focusing on sharing quality content and elevating the level of our technology community is crucial to achieving our purpose.
From here on most of the work was easier…
Up until this point, there is nothing Agile. None of this is different from the very traditional strategic planning work of any other company. Alignment, definitions, desires… everything is almost the same – because it is the way we found to align our vision with what we see in the company. And then it changes a little.
For each pillar, we defined possible outcome objectives and how we would measure each objective (proto-OKR). The intention was to exercise our vision, based on what we had in mind. A fictitious example of an objective, in a Customer pillar, could be “Extend the life cycle of customers in the company”, which can be measured in several ways: average time to hire, number of current contracts, etc. It is important that the metrics used are few – although some objectives may be more difficult to find metrics for.
And then came the fun part of this work: the real action . With the outcome objectives in mind, we started a discussion about which Capabilities the company needed to achieve in order to achieve these outcome objectives. We came up with more than 30, which were narrowed down to about 20, which in turn were voted on as the main ones that would be worked on first – we call them Capability Objectives. In a traditional company, these would be the Strategic Initiatives. Here, we were just the partners.
With few capacity goals, a high-level Release Plan was created so that we could outline a vision of our performance throughout the year. The intention was never to create a plan, but rather a direction. In fact, this vision did not prevent us from making decisions about the company that had not been envisioned (we even bought a company along the way ).
The intention was for us to meet monthly, quarterly, and biannually to review, reevaluate, reprioritize, and decide on the planning, which we failed to do in the first year of this action. But despite this, one important thing that happened was the alignment with the initial vision in the decisions that followed.
In the last planning cycle, we changed the work strategy a little (not of the company, but of the process), so that we could incorporate the new reality of the company.
As the company had grown, there was no longer any possibility that we would not invite the company's teams to participate in the process, since everyone is more involved in the day-to-day running of Lambda3 than ever before, and they are much more capable of bringing the vision on how to bring capabilities to the company, vision and result objectives.
Describing this process:
(0) As partners, we discussed what positioning we would like for the company, gathering information about the market, customers, studies and employees. We revisited what had been done previously to understand if it still aligned with our current vision. We used some common vision tools, is/isn't/does/doesn't, etc. to build a narrative of intention for the organization.
(1) We focused on which Outcome Objectives we wanted to achieve and how progress towards those objectives could be measured. This generated content to be shared with teams in meetings that I facilitated over several days, in the same room (result in the image)
(2) For each of the company's various teams, a meeting/facilitation was held on:
How the group saw the company's vision, determined and focused on our business
An explanation of the various artifacts generated (e.g.: What the company does not do, and why) with space for criticism, questions and feedback collection
A Discussion/listing of all the team's current challenges, main risks and issues faced
Related teams were invited to discuss how they saw the possibilities and what they expected from them (example: how the marketing department sees the commercial department, and what they expect from it)
A chart showing how the team sees itself in this vision of the company, and what needs to be done so that the objectives can be achieved (Thus generating Capacity Objectives, which at this point become actions of the teams themselves, and no longer of the partners)
(3) Each team sought to define a few Capability Objectives that would need to be achieved in order to reach the outcome objectives. Since teams are decentralized at Lambda3, it was up to them to define how they would organize themselves to achieve each capability objective.
(4) Each capability objective (voted and prioritized by the team that would act) was then explored, generating a Release Plan vision for the medium term (6 months), with the epics forming the direction.
Each partner was responsible for making the actions viable (as a sponsor) for some of the pillars, as a way of sharing the focus, since the company is already too big for us to be involved in everything that happens, all the time. It is also important to note that there is no direct relationship between the company's Pillars and the company's Areas, since everything is mixed together in the day-to-day. It is essential to think about People/Community/Technology in any aspect of the company, for example. The same goes for the way we group the Capability Objectives – they permeate multiple areas, even if their grouping is “technology” or “Products and Services”.
The important thing about this process, for me, was to help build a common vision within the organization regarding the company's direction. Decentralize discussions about the future, possibilities and how to achieve goals, discuss and exchange experiences about challenges and opportunities across all teams.
After this process, all the information was consolidated in the company's wiki, and each team chose the best way to organize themselves for the work (whether in Planner, Trello, Excel, etc.) within their own work routines. At the end, a presentation was made to everyone together, showing the results of the work.
My role as facilitator in this process was both challenging and satisfying, as it also allowed me to share my vision for the company in my own words. It was an effort not to use my position as a way to influence the work.
Overall, in the last 3 years:
We had an aligned discussion about vision and strategy
We look for ways to bring people closer to the strategy
We are learning to link such discussions and planning to the day-to-day running of the organization.
We need to improve the way we measure progress
What to expect for the next Planning cycle:
Consolidate the planning process (using learning from previous cycles)
Give greater emphasis to review meetings (even though they have taken place, there is a lack of cadence)
Make the consolidated plan more “visible” – integrated, accessible, transmitted – (we are taking several actions in this regard)
Present metrics and numbers consistently (challenge)
What I have noticed with the organization since the last cycle is that decisions and directions, even if the teams do not have a consolidated review/metric/learning process, are being made based on the vision and Outcome Objectives, which in itself is already a victory. The Capacity Objectives are being achieved.
Numerous experiments have been generated over the last year in the areas of People, Operations, Customers, Partners, and there is much more to talk about. All areas have matured a lot in the process. Expect more posts on the blog.
Transforming the strategy process into an experimentation process is the best way I believe to integrate the company into a common vision of Strategy and Execution. I hope this helps.
I spoke a little more about the results of this work with Parzianello himself. About the challenges and what direction we are taking for the next cycle of work:
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