Insights & Blog

We optimize what we measure, since if you measure the right things then humans will naturally adapt to optimizing them. History shows us, for example, if you measure innovation by the number of ideas or the number of patents, that’s what you get–ideas and patents. If you wanted something else, you should have measured something else. So how do you identify the right metrics? If you want to truly digitally transform your company, you need to start with the basics: focusing on the data that indicates progress towards outcomes -- Progress Impact Metrics (PIM).

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In this uncertain economy, businesses planning for the year ahead, will very likely include re-orgs. While re-organizing parts of the business might improve some efficiencies, it’s often disguising leadership problems rather than real productivity issues.

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The end result is a bias toward making people work harder, not smarter. If you’re looking for a true solution to more efficient workflow, then re-orgs should be thought of from the bottom-up, not top-down. Empower the bottom, so your organization can react to changes to its environment, which generally occur at the edge, not the center. Agile teams define work needed. New information is relayed to the top. Leadership alters strategy, communicates plans, and allocates resources.

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What’s so interesting about KPIs and OKRs is every few years there’s a new framework for metrics, but essentially, they’re always about outcomes. So, what are the desired outcomes?
We want more customers. We want happier customers. We want more revenue, more growth, and more market share.

That's going to keep the bosses happy and their bosses happy. And ultimately, will make investors and Wall Street happy. The challenge is when we’re down levels from those mega-desired outcomes, we don't feel like we can influence them too much.

Dividing your company into execution (delivery) mode vs exploration (discovery) mode, as recommended by the multi-named mythology of “ambidextrous organizations,” “dual operating systems,” or “dual innovation,” will prevent you from competing efficiently in the digital age. There are 4 simple steps to create operating mechanisms for dual track teams, i.e., teams that are responsible for execution also explore.

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Opportunity Discovery phase helps you determine the different needs that exist for each customer persona within your sandbox. There are 4 steps that can help you identify the opportunity by figuring out all of the actions that are being taken in the journey of a particular job, then you hypothesize where you might make an impact leveraging your company’s existing competitive advantages. You test whether these ideas positively impact the job, if the customer cares, and whether there’s a viable business model using rapid experimentation, e.g. Lean Startup.

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The trap that many corporations fall into is the belief that digital transformation is mostly a technological thing. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as there’s a human side to digital transformation. And while technology is disruptive to the business, it is not disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation is a purposeful re-imagining of how you structure and manage your work. It's recognizing that the real disruptions are external to the company, mostly in the form of pandemics, war, ransomware attacks, supply shocks, energy grid collapses, etc.

So the question becomes: how do you drive disruptive innovation? Start exploring within the core?

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In established businesses, leaders and employees assume the blueprint they use to execute on the business is fixed. But as the last few years demonstrate, little is fixed. Pandemic, war, supply chain issues, ransomware attacks, inflation–it’s crazy out there! All these events ripple across the business landscape, disrupting the markets. The blueprint maybe doesn’t work anymore.

How do you fix that?

we need to double down on understanding our customers deeply in order to build products that provide value. Old market research techniques just aren’t effective in the face of massive uncertainty. Product managers should be out doing this. Designers should be out doing this. Engineers should be going along for the ride. Build exploration into your regular work to improve efficiency of execution. Running experiments helps reduce risk and waste, not to mention that it provides real-world data to enable high-confidence decision-making.

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On this episode of Disruption Proof, we're discussing uncertainty in the market and how to go about it. The default nature of a new business is . There is no blueprint yet for building, marketing, selling and delivering new value for customers. The first step is (or ought to be) understanding the market needs. This requires interviewing potential customers and running experiments all before building any of it. In this episode, you'll learn how to undergo this exploration.

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This episode covers how you can properly 'survey' your customers so you can better understand them. We often lead customers on and are looking for confirmation bias when making decisions. Brant Cooper, NYT bestselling author and founder of Moves The Needle will go through how to properly pull data and make customer-centric decisions.

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This podcast covers, what is opportunity discovery and what it means to find new opportunities within your organization.

Brant Cooper NYT bestselling author and founder of Moves The Needle talks about what it truly means to be Disruption Proof. To him, disruption means much more than the ideology of startups eating away at the market share of large businesses. What we will focus on are the ongoing disruptions we're seeing at a rapid pace e.g. war, pandemic, global supply chain, ransomware attacks, inflation, shortages, and the list goes on. Brant will show you how to properly organize your teams and business to make sure you can not only survive in this new digital world, but thrive in it.

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What does it mean to be agile and how do you scale it within your organization? In a truly agile environment, individual performance must be tied to team performance relative to its mission. Of course, the devil is in the details. What is a mission?

Brant Cooper, NYT bestselling author and founder of Moves The Needle dives into all of this and more.

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Exploration improves execution efficiency, while laying the foundation for future growth. This is why it is crucial to explore in the core. In this blog post, Brant Cooper, NYT bestselling author and founder of Moves The Needle talks about how to explore in the core to reduce uncertainty in order to improve operational efficiency, while also uncovering new opportunities.

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Unlike Horizon Planning where projects are prioritized based on "level of innovation" and "time to ROI", Visibility Planning is based on evidence. In other words, we estimate the likelihood of achieving desired outcomes and when, based on market data and insights. We measure progress toward desired outcomes, which determines the time horizon.