Ambidexterity

There are tensions between:

• effectiveness, efficiency, capability, and speed
• current offerings and potential future offerings
• the short-term and the long-term
• current customers and potential customers
• between current capability and where the organization needs to be
• management and leadership

As an executive, don’t say you want to be number 1 when your actions consistently demonstrate you’re ok with number 3 or less. For example:

• Getting a consulting firm to do the thinking for you
• Dividing agility by functional department without knitting it together
• "Agile washing"
• Leaving agility to teams only
• Comparing teams with "velocity" because you cannot deliver value
• Using short-term suppliers as a norm
• Doing only what was "proven" elsewhere, probably by your competitors

Even “fast followers” need to manage tensions to get to number 3.

For an organization unable to manage such tensions, there needs to be more intentional action by you. It's difficult, but you must do it. Failing catastrophically is ok, I guess. Or maybe pass the three envelopes to the next executive after you inscribed them in the following order:

1. Blame the last executive
2. Restructure
3. Prepare three envelopes

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