Adoption Approach for the Elegance Methodology

This past month, two illustrious innovators (Iryna C and Stuart M!) exposed some neglect in my materials. I’ll paraphrase their feedback as, “If I want to adopt this, I don’t know where to start.” At the time, my answers were unacceptably ambiguous! This article aims to mend this neglect.

This is also a worthwhile occasion to remind my network of the target audience of the Elegance methodology. The target audience is innovation professionals exasperated with their teamwork and culture. If you are quite content with your current culture and teamwork, excellent! You have plenty of other material to read (and write yourself)!

There are 10 different places you can start to adopt Elegance – the people-centric methodology. The various links go to blogs that I wrote in 2020. Of course, I recommend you view the 2024 versions in my second book, “Innovation Portfolio: Five Verbs Shape your Team’s Legacy.”

1. Convert your RACI matrix (Four Adjectives) into a project plan emphasizing Five Verbs.
2. If your current project plan contains dozens of distinct verbs (Verb Sprawl), and if you agree this is overly complex, noisy, counterproductive variability, distinguish two different kinds of work. For work that warrants collaboration that a future team will care about, package the work into a titled “expectation,” and manage it with Five Verbs. For work that requires no collaboration, that the details don’t interest a future team, and documentation is irrelevant, manage however you see fit.
3. If your team has documentation debt, adopt the routine to document Current State assets. If you have an individual contributor who struggles to work in a synchronized environment, assign them to draft Current State assets.
4. If you sense low morale among some employees, adopt Lens of the Individual assets.
5. If the team has relationship problems, adopt monthly Approachability exercises.
6. If you are uncertain about the health or efficiency of the team, adopt a monthly Lessons Learned exercise.
7. If the team needs to increase its amount of innovation work, adopt the Voice of the Customer & Seller, Change Log, and a few Project Charters.
8. If the team might need to decrease its amount of work, emphasize the Roadmap, Project Plan, and Stoplight Report.
9. If stakeholders have low engagement, adopt the People assets.
10. If the team overemphasizes technology, adopt the Process assets.

In the comments, I tag known readers and recent audience members. I welcome questions and ideas! Thank you!

For more information on the Elegance methodology, please explore my two books.

Innovation Elegance: Transcending Agile with Ruthlessness and Grace.

Innovation Portfolio: Five Verbs Shape Your Team’s Culture.