Skip to Market
Everyone pushing in the same direction
When making progress feels more like wading through treacle and you’re unsure about what to try next
Let’s get this
thing moving
It’s supposed to be a flywheel.
The way it’s supposed to work is this. Everything you and your team do contributes towards everything else you and your team do, with the whole thing acting like a unit. You get better at what you do (however you test the metric) and you never feel like Sisyphus.
The problem is … things get out of whack.
For some reason – probably because people are working in the dark (without knowing where they should be heading, or how) and doing whatever they individually think is best (without it being agreed as a team) – everybody’s kinda-sorta pushing in different directions.
Organisationally, you’re getting in your own way.
And that’s what stops the flywheel spinning – at least not turning anywhere near as easily as it should or as anyone wants.
Which is why everything feels like a struggle.
Because it is.
- Projects takes longer than they should and end up some place other than where you expected.
- The old ways are the only ways and complacency undermines innovation.
- All the pieces are in place, but the whole is less than the sum.
- The only thing that changes around here is the date.
- Good people get frustrated. Some of them leave.
- Everyone’s busy but we’re not making progress.
- Urgency? What urgency?
- The old silo problem.
Productive Clarity is about setting things up so everything nudges the flywheel in the same direction. Which means dealing with the day-to-day whilst moving toward long-term goals you care about.
The formula? Set out the goals, understand the obstacles, agree the route, get on with it.
Where Skip to Market is customer facing, Productive Clarity is organisational, adding operational reality into the equation along with the who, the what and the how of building and managing the organisation you want.
Using a single and frustrating roadblock as a starting point – Productive Clarity is designed to ensure what you do every day is in line with your strategy and contributes towards your goals. Of course, if that means clarifying goals and nailing down strategy along the way (it probably will), that’s the route we’ll travel.
Like most things that are important, it’s a community effort – involving your core team and anyone else who has perspective and needs buy-in.
Skip to Market
Clarity about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there
The perfect reset for any team that’s fed up with wading through treacle.
A systems thinking approach that gives a clear structure and sets you up to build the organisation you want.
Looking at all four layers, exposing the levers that drive the value you create and the business you’re building.
- Who we are
- What we’re trying to do
- How we’ll get there
- What we’re working on now
The objective: an aligned team, a commitment to action, a guiding sense of direction and focus, and everyone pushing the same direction.
How this works
You’re ready to get started, or you’re thinking about it. How do we make progress?
We get together. Online at first, maybe in person too. I need to know more about you and your situation and you need to know more about me. We both have to work out if we can work together.
Commitment. In this case, commitment is a code word for paperwork. An NDA, a contract, an invoice. Normal stuff.
Homework. The baseline, I’ll give you a shopping list of the documents and materials I need – the stuff I can’t read on your website.
A bullet-point version of your team and your business.
The who, what, why and how that describes your organisation, and a hot list of the frustrations that have made you get in touch.
This might take a few hours for you to gather things together. Our first real session will then be about the story you’ve told and the deeper reality.
The work. Between us, we’ll identify some key insights and work on weaving them into a coherent plan that everyone is bought into.
It’s a team effort. You, me, your people. Together, through a mixture of meetings, workshops, research and more homework between each session, we’ll work our way to clarity about what’s holding you back, what to do about it and how to move forward.
Let’s assume there are no easy answers. So it’s likely to be an iterative process, particularly around the most foundational questions. This normally means going deep into value proposition and positioning, and vision and strategy.
How long? Cadence is important. We’ll speak at least once a week and will schedule as many team workouts, in person or online, as we need.
Given that none of this stuff is particularly easy and that scheduling is always a compromise … two or three months to work through the process.
After that, you’ll get on with the new world, and I’ll assist with execution and accountability for the following three months.
Throughout the process we can go deeper where we need to and I’ll act as a sounding board and help you work through any obstacles that continue to get in the way.
Typically, it’s six months end-to-end.
The ground we’ll cover. We’ll start with your most pressing frustration and involve your core team to unpick the issues that are holding you back – probably something organisational, market facing or strategic, or a combination.
Depending on the issues, we’ll use lenses from different parts of the Layers Framework to get clarity and build agreement. The elements work together to create a clear strategy and structure for how you go about your business as a team.
Team selection is critical. For each element, we’ll agree who other than the principal(s) should be involved but my strong recommendation is to include anyone critical to buy-in (and not to be beholden to job titles).
Commitment. That word again. This time it’s code for a plan that everyone’s signed up for, and a programme of accountability that ensures action. Shhh … it’s also code for sacrifice, because any plan is as much about what you won’t do as it is about what you will.