it’s not enough that organizations pursue new ideas faster
Unless they develop new muscles for skillfully decelerating and adapting to unexpected twists and turns, they are likely to come up empty-handed
Darrell K. Rigby, Sarah Elk and Steve Berez, partners Bain & Company; and co-authors Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos
takeaways of note:
3 suggestions to improve agility & start stopping things faster
1. Make more decisions reversible… (1) Recognize business plans for what they really are: Business Experiments; (2) Break large, risks into a series of smaller, smarter tests; (3) Clarify hypotheses, best ways to test them, & metrics that will signal whether to persist, pivot, or pause; (4) Avoid premature scaling; (5) Match costs to revenues2. Make work more visible… helps uncover valuable initiatives, recognize people, accelerate progress, identify duplicative work & trigger discussions
3. Overpower fear… (1) Reduce the cost of stopping projects, (2) Reward people who learn valuable lessons by taking prudent risks, (3) Give people more opportunities if their current project fails