Accelerate (XLR8) by John Kotter
PREFACE
- Incremental adjustments to how you manage and strategize, no matter how clever, are not up to the job.
- The solution is not to trash what we know and start over but instead to reintroduce, in an organic way, a dual operating system to needed agility and speed while the old one, which keeps running, provides reliability and efficiency.
- Find cases representing the highest 10% or 20% of performers. Observe what they do. Talk to people who have lived in those situations. Then do the same for the average performers and for the laggards
1. Limits of Hierarchy in a Faster-Moving World
2. Seizing Opportunities with a Dual Operating System
- Any company that isn’t rethinking its direction at least every few years (as well as constantly adjusting to shifting contexts) and then quickly making necessary operational changes is putting itself at risk.
- Virtually all successful organizations on earth go through a very similar life cycle.
- They begin with a network-like structure.
- Over time, a successful organization evolves through a series of stages into an enterprise that is structured as a hierarchy and is driven by well-known managerial processes: planning, budgeting, job defining, staffing, measuring, problem solving.
- The management-driven hierarchies which good enterprises use and we take for granted are one of the most amazing innovations of the twentieth century. And they are still absolutely necessary to make organizations work.
- A dual system is more about leading strategic initiatives to capitalize on big opportunities or dodge big threats than it is about management.
- The basic structure is self-explanatory: hierarchy on one side and network on the other.
- [The network] structure looks roughly like a constantly evolving solar system, with a guiding mechanism as the sun, strategic initiatives as planets, and sub-initiatives as moons or satellites.
- The hierarchy part of the dual operating system differs from almost every other hierarchy today in one very important way. Much of the work ordinarily assigned to it that demands innovation, agility, difficult change, and big strategic initiatives executed quickly — challenges dumped on work streams, tiger teams, or strategy departments — has been shifted over to the network part.
- A well-functioning dual operating system is guided by a few basic principles:
- Many people driving important change, and from everywhere, not just the usual few appointees.
- A “get-to “mindset, not a “have-to “one.
- Action that is head and heart driven, not just head driven.
- Much more leadership, not just more management.
- An inseparable partnership between the hierarchy and the network, not just an enhanced hierarchy.
- THE EIGHT ACCELERATORS
- Create a sense of urgency around a Big Opportunity.
- Build and evolve a guiding coalition (“GC”)
- Form a change vision and strategic initiatives.
- Enlist a volunteer army.
- Enable action by removing barriers
- Generate (and celebrate) short-term wins.
- Sustain acceleration. – Larger initiatives will lose steam and support unless related sub-initiatives are also completed successfully
- Institute change – Institutionalize wins, integrating them into the hierarchy’s processes, systems, procedures, and behavior
- We have found that just 5 to 10% of the managerial and employee population in a hierarchy is all you need to make the network function beautifully
- They create conditions under which people generate not just ideas, but ideas backed by good data from all silos and levels in a hierarchy.
- One is ensuring that the two parts of the system learn to work together well. Here it is essential that the core of the network (the guiding coalition) and the executive committee learn to develop and maintain the right relationship. Another is building momentum: the most important step here is to create and communicate wins from the very start.
- Probably the biggest challenge is how to make people who are accustomed to control-oriented hierarchies believe that a dual system is even possible. A rational and compelling sense of urgency around a big strategic opportunity is so important.
3. The Stakes: A Cautionary Tale
(no substantive highlights)
4. Leadership and Evolution
- Management is a set of well-known processes that help organizations produce reliable, efficient, and predictable results.
- Leadership is about setting a direction. It’s about creating a vision, empowering and inspiring people to want to achieve the vision, and enabling them to do so with energy and speed through an effective strategy. In its most basic sense, leadership is about mobilizing a group of people to jump into a better future.
5. The Five Principles and Eight Accelerators in Action
- The 5 Principles:
- Principle 1: You need a radical increase in the number of people involved in creating or executing strategic initiatives. [One] would never unleash many change agents without a “get-to “and “want-to “philosophy, instead of a “have-to “one.
- Principle 2: it’s all about volunteers. Pull them in with head and heart.
- Principle 3: (unclear)
- Principle 4: Leadership, leadership, leadership
- Principle 5: The two systems must act as one organization
- For any given activity in the network, the people with the best information, connections, motivation, and skills took the lead — not necessarily the person with the highest position in the hierarchy.
- [Before launching] initiatives check first to see if similar activities [are] already in progress in the left-side hierarchy.
6. Relentlessly Developing and Role Modeling Urgency
- I have yet to see a situation in which a traditional business case has created a massive sense of urgency among large groups of people around a big strategic opportunity.
- Nothing is as powerful in opening masses of minds, supplying relevant information, drawing out passion, and then creating a great sense of urgency around a big competitive opportunity than role modeling. In the successful dual systems I’ve seen built, such role modeling typically starts at the top.
- A large part of the effective and relentless role modeling of urgency is to make visible and celebrate any seized opportunities — even if they are small wins — that demonstrate movement in a strategically sensible and exciting direction.
- Being relentless is key. This means role modeling with as many mechanisms as possible, as often as possible, and involving as many people as possible.
7. The Big Opportunity
- A “Big Opportunity “is usually the product of changes in an organization’s environment (such as new markets, new advances in technology, or new demands being placed on an enterprise by competition or turmoil), changes inside the organization (such as new products or new people), or both.
- A Big Opportunity is not a “vision, “although the two may seem similar. A Big Opportunity could be, in part, “Because of contextual factor X and our special capability Y, we have a very real and exciting opportunity to offer service Z and substantially grow our revenues and profits
- A strategy is usually just a more analytical way of describing a vision. A great vision is literally something that one can imagine visually: it is about actions, people, customers — and therefore what businesses you wish to be in.
- If the vision and strategy call for a major transformation to take advantage of the opportunity, then all the strategic initiatives will need to add up to create that transformation.
- A well-crafted Big Opportunity statement can be comprehended by a clerk or a factory worker — and has the potential to create a true sense of urgency in the offices, in the factories, or anywhere.
- The most effective Big Opportunity statement seems to have these characteristics
- Short. It can be written on less than a page, often just a quarter of a page.
- Rational.
- A good Big Opportunity often addresses issues of what, why, why us, why now, and why bother, all in a short statement.
- Compelling.
- Positive.
- Authentic.
- Clear.
- Aligned.
8. Getting Started: Q&A
- Accelerator networks don’t have traditional operating plans. They have Big Opportunity statements, change visions, and a list of the current strategic initiatives and sub-initiatives.
- Accelerator networks measure the successes of initiatives quantitatively, but also with observations and inferences
- Right-side networks will allow initiative teams to create and use their own measures.
- I have yet to see a case in which a compensation scheme is required to make a right-side network work. People participate for reasons other than compensation.
- For the system to work and sustain itself, the left-side executive committee must choose to set the network up, allow it to function, and role model supportive behavior.
- In successful dual systems, the Guiding Coalition has many functions, including
- (1) making sure the network has a change vision that is totally aligned with the Big Opportunity
- (2) agreeing on what the primary strategic initiatives are at any one point in time and making sure they are aligned with the change vision as well as any left-side strategic plans and strategic initiatives
- (3) keeping in tight communication with the executive committee, but not as in a left-side reporting relationship
- (4) monitoring, but not controlling, what is happening in the strategy-accelerator network, looking out for unnoticed overlap between initiatives on the right and left, and facilitating communication and problem solving among initiatives
- (5) looking for and celebrating wins
- (6) in general keeping the accelerator processes working well.
- As for who runs the Guiding Coalition: no one does in a hierarchical sense. A facilitator helps it to work as a team. There are always one or two “go-to “people who emerge (organically) and help lead each major initiative.
- People can expand their energy and expertise to 120% or 150% of current levels, and in a well-functioning dual system they do.
- A properly crafted Big Opportunity statement alone provides guardrails on right-side work and will keep out many a pet project.
- In a well-functioning dual system, the people on the right learn that lecturing people on the left about their flawed approaches will usually create only conflict, wasted time, and stresses.
- High-stakes initiatives that will likely involve a lot of change, where speed is important, where there are ambiguities, or where innovation and agility will be needed, go on the right side.
- A right-side organization does not have a budget per se.
- The right side is always a convince-me, lead-me organization, not a do-what-I-say, manage-me organization
9. The (Inevitable) Future of Strategy
- Today strategy is thought of as having two basic components: creation and implementation.