Disrupt Toolkit

Tools & Techniques

OKRs

DEFINE STRATEGY l DEFINE OUTCOMES & GOALS

I want a flexible, collaborative method that ensures activities are aligned to the strategy across the organisation.

This transparent, non-hierarchical approach helps deliver change by facilitating a shared understanding of the organisation’s goals before directly aligning to them a set of measurable objectives. It is an alternative to the traditional, KPI-driven methods of measuring performance, which have been proven to lack effectiveness for organisations and sectors experiencing change and/or disruption. At the end of the session, a set of objectives will have been mapped and aligned to the goals of the organisation, with key measures, responsibilities, and timescales agreed.

Roadmap Radar

DEFINE STRATEGY l DEFINE OUTCOMES & GOALS l PLAN

I need to visualise the goals and objectives of the organisation, with initiatives plotted on the radar to indicate clusters and gaps in effort.

Once you have the goals and objectives of the organisation affirmed through an OKR session, plot current initiatives against each objective, whilst indicating timeline (in this quarter, in the next quarter, etc.). This visualises the balance of effort and informs you of any robust conversations you need to have with the client about misaligned effort.

Strategic Maturity Assessment

DEFINE STRATEGY

I want to better understand the strategic characteristics of an organisation, in order to tailor-make my recommendations

Sending out this brief survey in advance of engaging a client can provide valuable insights into the history and context of the organisation. Categorising levels of strategic maturity into five main characteristics (epitomised by animals - 'Adaptability' being a chameleon; 'Intentionality' being an eagle; etc), allows you to quickly focus in on the right tools and techniques to recommend for the best results soonest. The final report is fully customisable, according to the responses from the client.

Current & Future Reality Trees

UNDERSTAND PROBLEM SPACE l DEFINE SOLUTION l MANAGE CHALLENGES

I want to see beyond intermediate effects to understand the root causes of observed undesirable effects and devise injections that will make a lasting difference

The causes of undesirable effects (e.g., ‘Morale is low’) are often misunderstood in organisations. This process allows the team to plot and rank their observations, show how intermediate effects relate to one another, and eventually become root causes. By identifying and isolating root causes, the team can then discuss and agree on hypotheses around concrete interventions to reverse the undesirable effects and measure the impact of the resulting changes.

Business Evolution Map

DEFINE STRATEGY l PLAN l MANAGE CHALLENGES l GATHER CONTEXT

I want to help busy executives make strategic planning easier and quicker by giving them an innovative and highly effective tool for visualising opportunities and risks in core and adjacent markets.

In the same way that you navigate the physical world, the map provides a powerful way to visualise the business environment and to help clients identify the best moves to ensure they win while others fail. Based on decades of experience of failure and success with clients of different sectors, countries, and sizes, the tool can be used to substantiate a comprehensive set of recommendations.

Customer Journey Mapping

DEFINE WAYS OF WORKING l MANAGE CHALLENGES l DEFINE SOLUTION

I want to map the customer journey process from end-to-end, starting with the requirements through to an agreed definition of ‘done’, looking for pain points, duplication, and redundancy.

Bringing delivery teams together and having them talk through the customer journey process from beginning to end, indicating hand-offs and delays, helps pinpoint issues in the organisational design, identify potential improvements to ways of working, and interrogate systemic issues (e.g., lack of domain knowledge) – all from a customer-value perspective. The facilitator collects the as-is process and displays each one in the room before compiling all the as-is processes (see diagram above) and before mapping out an optimised, to-be process, highlighting efficiency and efficacy gains.

Code Reviews

GATHER CONTEXT l UNDERSTAND PROBLEM SPACE

I want to contextualise our technical recommendations by seeing the codebase and observing how the client’s team interacts with it on a daily basis.

Sitting with the client’s development teams and gathering their perspectives as they code is vital to building a thorough and empathetic understanding of the codebase and any infrastructural issues which would affect progress.

Lean Value Tree

DEFINE STRATEGY l DEFINE OUTCOMES & GOALS l FIND IDEAS

I want to organise the bets to make the most effective interventions and measure the results.

Each activity from the teams must aim at (dis)proving a hypothesis through experimentation, which in turn links to an objective and aligns with a strategic goal. The betting language is intentional – how much time and effort are you willing to commit to the exploration of this idea? Some ideas require more investment to prove than others, and some are better understood and therefore require less validation. As a result, not all bets are equal.

Bet canvas

UNDERSTAND PROBLEM SPACE l DEFINE SOLUTIONS l COMMUNICATION

I want to create highly structured bets with an outline of how experiments will be designed, measures of success will be defined, and any challenges and risks will be captured.

The canvas is designed to ensure that each bet has a clear and robust structure, and can be displayed for all teams to see and add suggestions, comments, and questions. It will guarantee the consistency of the approach, highlight the unknown, and allow easy and regular reporting of progress.

Team Health Checks

MANAGE CHALLENGES l GATHER CONTEXT l UNDERSTAND PROBLEM SPACE

I want to assess all aspects of team health, confirm strengths, and explore issues.

Bring delivery teams into the room, and hand out traffic light cards, showing red, amber, and green. Proceed through a structured set of questions, asking team members to turn over their cards at the same time. Take a tally and discuss the results as a group. Where there are differences of opinion, be sure to vote again, and note if any minds are changed by the discussion.

One-to-one interviews

UNDERSTAND PROBLEM SPACE l BUILD DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE l GATHER CONTEXT

I want to run consistent, in-depth interviews with a range of stakeholders to better understand the past, present, and future.

Using a structured interview process to gather information from stakeholders from different functions has proved very effective when capturing a range of feedback. Themes that spontaneously emerge from the process can be used to inform the final playback session with the Exec, as well as provide an evidence base for other activities, such as Current and Future Reality Trees.

Online survey

UNDERSTAND PROBLEM SPACE l BUILD DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE l GATHER CONTEXT

I want to send out an online survey that gathers useful information whilst allowing everyone to feel they have contributed to the process

Designing a brief but comprehensive online survey allows the EE team to gather information from a much wider universe than is possible through one-to-one interviews, or team-by-team workshops.

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