This month we delve into the autonomy of global teams, CEOs & innovation & failure and Federated decision-making.
WHAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION THIS MONTH
How much autonomy should you give your global teams? Depending on the pace of the sector, the company's reliance on local assets, and its level of trust in local leaders, managers can determine which overseas divisions will benefit from a more centralized structure, and which will be better off making decisions more independently. (8 min read)
CEOs and department heads look at failure in different ways. To expand the portfolio of transformational innovation, you need to try a lot (and fail a lot). And that means that you need to change everybody's approach to failure, not just the CEO's. (8 min read)
In Agile organizations, you don't have to choose between team autonomy and "command and control". There is a better way: Federated decision-making.
(6 min read)
Stop wasting people's time with bad meetings. At a time where there's more focus on the quality of meetings, it pays to take the opportunity to showcase your best self to your colleagues and make sure you're spending your time and energy wisely. Here are five strategies to help you do that. (9 min read)
Strong product companies understand that product development requires craftmanship. In a video interview re-discovered after his death, Steve Jobs delves into the nature of products, what makes a good one and what it takes to build it.
(6 min read - 1h17 watch)
Leaders have an important role to play in creativity. A strong vision and a more disciplined approach can actually equal more creative results. (9 min read)
Teaming is hard because you're probably not really on a team. Teams don't exist simply because someone puts some names in boxes on an org chart and assigns a leader. Quite the opposite. Teams exist for specific reasons and have specific supporting structures. (9 min read)
Organizations still have a post-WO II mindset and that sabotages teams. Read these instructions and see if they seem familiar to you. Did you ever have a team member or manager within your organization who behaved like this? (14 min read)
It's frustrating when stakeholders don't attend sprint reviews. Stakeholders not participating in spring reviews is a serious problem. Mike Cohn offers seven reasons why your sprint reviews might be poorly attended — and ideas on how to solve them. (15 min read)
People often fail to achieve their conversational goals because they fail to identify their objectives. The "Conversational Circumplex", which visualises conversation types according to their informational and relational values, can help us prepare and plan, guide us more clearly, and ultimately yield greater success. (8 min read)
A QUOTE THAT MADE US THINK
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
— H. L. Mencken, via Herding Cats