How do Strategy Engagement Frameworks enable us to design organisations which continually engage the very best of our people’s potential?
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deploying meaning to inspire creativity and ownership
Whatever future you visualise, the key to making it a reality will be enabling your people to visualise their own futures within it. This is the core purpose of the Strategy Engagement Matrix.This is because every idea and aspiration you draw from your people builds their engagement. And, as a result, this begins to shift the ownership.
Consequently, it begins to create a sense of joint responsibility in a shared endeavour.
This sense of engagement starts to shift the paradigm from being ‘you and your team’, to ‘our team’, our endeavour, our challenge, our vision.
joint responsibility in a shared endeavour
If you have a small team and fairly clear role (and at one level, we all do) then your strategy engagement framework may be as simple as increasing participation through easy to use participative techniques.However, if you are concerned with a larger structure of inter-related teams, then you will require a more sophisticated framework. This is due to the need to enable each of those teams to envision futures that are not only mutually compatible, but which make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
Such a framework is the Strategy Engagement Matrix. This is a pivotal tool for organisation design and for the Organisation Design sprint methodology.
making sure all of the parts are going in the same direction
The Strategy Engagement Matrix is based on a design framework (QFD) used to develop advanced complex systems by simplifying the connections and context.Its visual layout brings the complexity of the modern business down to simplicity and clarity for individual teams. It enables them to see how they can contribute to the overall vision. And it provides for them to reconsider their strengths and potential, and to propose new ideas.
As an organisation design tool, the matrix enables you to reconsider what sort of (adaptive) internal structure can best leverage your vision. As a result, you will be able to ensure that you present your greatest strengths and potential to the challenges and opportunities you face.
adaptive structures that leverage your vision
To put it another way, the Strategy Engagement Matrix acts as a living digital twin of the organisation. Consequently, it enables you to quickly assess the impact of your increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) business context. And simultaneously include the potential of new technology developments.As a result, you can engage your leadership in making real-time adjustments to goals or structure. And your local teams immediately see what is required of them. So as to work quickly and creatively to develop and implement a response.
Strategy Engagement Matrices are the embodiment of Agile strategy
In effect, Strategy Engagement Matrices are an ongoing, continuously evolving picture of how meaning flows through your organisation. As a result, it enables intelligent, strategic, real-time change. And, at the same time, it maintains ownership and agency with those who will make it a reality. Adaptive organisational structures that are the epitome of Agile.But the Strategy Engagement Matrix goes further than this, laying out the optimum network of communication. In this way, changes in one area are instantly supported and utilised by its process neighbours. As a result, teams can see the interrelated nature of the goals that bring them together. And thereby prioritise their efforts for the good of the whole. This stimulates and directs Agile innovation within every part of your organisation:
- The visual interconnection of teams within a shared vision makes it easier to establish a supportive empowering culture
- The ability of people to immediately see where they and their teams can contribute make it easier for leaders to adopt a facilitative approach
- The structure and causality reflected in the framework enrich cross functional problem solving dialogue and collaboration
- The visual nature of the framework makes it the ideal heart for your insight landscaping
And all of this makes the achievement of your shared vision more certain. Especially within the context of increasing change and uncertainty.
Agile Organisation Design Sprints
Furthermore, the Strategy Engagement Matrix can be easily merged into Google’s Design Sprint methodology to create an Organisational Design Sprint.This provides a powerful and innovative methodology that you can cascade down through your organisation.
As a result, each business entity, at whatever level, is empowered to quickly reconfigure their structure and processes to adaptively pursue the vision through evolving challenges and opportunities.
stimulating and aligning business-wide innovation
Indeed, the Strategy Engagement Matrix and the Organisation Design Sprint may be the only Strategy Engagement Frameworks which are fit for purpose in our increasingly VUCA future. Putting it in place while it is still only an ‘option’ could be the best business decision you make.
To explore this topic further, feel free to contact us. We find our own thinking is continually sharpened and enriched by the questions people ask. And by the discussions that emerge from it.
Strategy Engagement Frameworks
For more information on frameworks to enable better strategy engagement, take a look at the following article: How design thinking transforms the strategic planning process, or read about a practical example in our case study