Accelerate innovation for this new era

The previous issue announced the news of my upcoming book, DECISION SPRINT : The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action (April 25, 2023; McGraw Hill).

In this issue, I share the WHY behind the book, and its timeliness.

In a nutshell, Decision Sprint tackles the hardest part of moving ideas to action - dealing with the unknowns.

The Problem

As leaders, we face new and unknown territory constantly yet struggle to make strategy actionable.?

New territory is exciting but often starts with a messy pile of unknowns - Re:Wire # 19

One of the biggest challenges in business is to convert ambition, strategy, or intent into the right course of action. It’s not enough to have a corporate purpose, strategic pillars, and a list of underlying initiatives or projects.

Your company may have a nice set of OKR's or even a strategy slide but that still leaves the question - how do we get there?

How do we—leaders and teams—traverse the space between objective and results??

That’s the hard part. A world of unknowns will always characterize anything big or meaningful. And a large, unsorted pile of unknowns is exactly what makes it hard to lift off. Without a method to address unknowns, our work can feel like operating in kryptonite.

We need a method to address them.?

How Companies React to Unknowns

Companies react to unknowns with one of two reflexes. They can shy away and rush ahead to planning based on what they already understand. In this mental model, it’s viewed as weakness to acknowledge unknowns, so it’s best to move on from them rapidly.

The other reflex is to allow autonomous exploration, but often in isolation, with multiple teams doing similar work without communicating and benefiting from each other. It’s a breakdown in the collective intelligence of an organization.? Silicon Valley is currently reeling from this waste. We're witnessing the end of an era of growth at all costs and every tech CEO is placing a much higher bar on teams.

The response to unknowns is most visible when it comes time for decisions. Did we play small ball and kick the can down the road, or did we go forward with more questions than answers? Neither path is optimal. Decision points can feel rife with these pitfalls, but the tables are set upstream.

The tables are always set upstream - Re:Wire # 19

Go Upstream?

To experience speed and quality in decision-making, organizations must start further upstream.

Upstreaming is a new way to innovate that helps an organization move with speed and quality.

Without a method for handling upstream work, companies often must choose between bureaucracy and chaos.?

CEOs of large incumbents fear the former but struggle to identify the root cause and solutions beyond slogans. CEOs of high-growth companies can’t afford to soften the pedal as survival depends on continued innovation. But they need sharper, more purposeful collaboration across their talent pools.

So what exactly is “upstream work”? It’s the part of an initiative or problem space with more questions than answers.?

Questions always stream in much faster than answers at the start of a promising idea or important problem space. We only get to quality execution if the answers begin to outweigh the questions, no matter how promising the opportunity or urgent it is to take action on a problem.?

Upstream work is how we connect exploration to alignment to decision-making. Only after connecting these three phases can an initiative move downstream, where execution lives. Decision Sprint spells it all out.

The tables are always set upstream. Explore the right questions, develop the right answers, and come to the right conclusions – that’s how to move from strategy to action.?

The Solution

Decision Sprint is a system built ground up for the work of turning unknowns into knowns, to produce the clarity needed for faster and better decision-making.?

In 25 years of business, I have never encountered a systematic way to deal with unknowns. Yet they are the common characteristic of any big bet, innovation, strategic initiative, or new growth opportunity in any organization.

A prototype will only get you so far; today's problems are more complex

This system handles every aspect of upstream work while feeding into today’s project and planning activities.?

Decision Sprint will guide you through concrete methods that empower all levels of an organization to meet unknowns head-on. Once you see the massive unstructured nature of upstream work centered on dealing with unknowns, you will suddenly discover new and better solutions.

Decision Sprint will show how teams achieve both speed and quality as they progress from idea to action

The full introduction is free to read via the Decision Sprint website.

In the next issue, I’ll dive deeper into the three main phases of the Decision Sprint method: exploration, alignment, and decision making. Until then, preorder the book and stay tuned for more exciting news to come!

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