EyesHandsLegs_v6_20160624

Eyes, Hands, and Legs: Operationalizing Your Digital Business | Drew Harteveld | dharteveld@yahoo.com 1
EyesOperatonazng
Operationalizing Digital Strategy

An SDLC for Digital Strategy
 In the software industry, we utilize a concept called a Software
Development Lifecycle , or SDLC, to help ground all project planning.
It gives us a place to start
 A similar grounding model can add tremendous value for the Digital
business as a whole, even at the strategic planning level
 The SDLC provides a basic structure through which to ensure all
major components of strategy are being adequately covered
To maximize impact in your Digital
business, focus on three key components:
Eyes, Hands, and Legs

EyesEyes provide visibility as to your market, your business,
and yourself.

Eyes Hands provide the ability to construct products and
services in response to the opportunities presented by
the market.
Hands

Eyes Legs provide the locomotion to move
the operation through different
business models, maintaining its
relevance over time.
Hands
Legs

Analytics
EyesInvest to put the proper analytics in place
 Understand the measures that
matter for your business
 Support of analytics is ongoing,
not something that can be
installed and abandoned
 Measure + Threshold = Key
Performance Indicator (KPI)
 Digital Technology is the most
demand-available analytical
industry ever created.
Leverage this strength!

Actionable
EyesMake Analytics Actionable
Create narrative structures that allow your team to easily convert analytical inputs into
actionable plans

EyesInvest to map the market
 Understand the contours of your market,
and where you fit within them
 Where are the patches of profitability?
risk? demand? disruption?
 Who are the end customers? Channel
customers?
 Utilize both qualitative and quantitative
methods
 Where are we now? Where do we want
to go? What is our path to get there?
Know thy Market, Know Thyself
Its not just about you. Its about
you in context.

Limits of Vision
EyesAccept the limits of vision
 Ancient Greek view of time: walking backward through history
 Nobody can divine the future, so don’t bother trying
 Beyond about 18 weeks, it’s a crapshoot
 Even based on a diligent, logical assessment, you will probably be wrong
…so stay loose!
By Laurence Gonzales

Know thy Market, Know Thyself
EyesHonest Analysis
 Slaughter the sacred cows
 Everything is on the table for discussion
 Only a fool ignores what he knows to be true

Hands Hands provide the ability to construct products and services in
response to the opportunities presented by the market.

Swift & Scalable Process
HandsIterative Delivery
 Add profitable value to the firm as early and often as possible
 Don’t bother with the Master Plan. ITERATE!
 Limit project scope/ lifecycles. No Intergalactic
Star Cruisers
 Try not to rebuild anything that already exists,
unless you have very, very good reason
Partner, pilfer, or purchase instead

Push Power Down
 Forge entrepreneurial teams and endow them with the authority necessary
to get the job done
 Push tactical control as close as possible to those with their boots in
the battlespace
 Creativity and chaos are sisters.
To court the former,
you must embrace the latter
 Herd the anarchy, without taming it
Hands

Formalize Prioritization Structures
 Everyone plays by the same prioritization rules, including the boss
 Push prioritization contention up the chain of command. It is the right and
responsibility of leadership to make those tough calls
 Ignore the screamers. Just let ‘em scream, and scream, and scream, and scream, a
Hands

Retain Winners
Human Resource Regime
 Reward those who produce value based on codified strategy
 Showboating, freestyling, and goldplating are net-negatives
 Cut out bad apples quickly and ruthlessly. It’s your job to
be Machiavelli. Do your job.
 Acknowledge the hidden costs of resource churn
 Employ consultants to provide knowledge and outside
perspective to the stable internal team – nothing more
Hands

Prioritization & Funding
Define Funding Vehicles
 All approved initiatives must be fully funded
through a vehicle with:
o Clearly articulated goals
o Constrained timeframes
o Identified risks
 Utilize Earned Value Analysis to relentlessly
track performance against expectations
 Sometimes abandoning a non-performing
initiative on the two-yard line is exactly
the right business decision to make
Hands

Legs Legs provide the locomotion to move the operation through
different business models, maintaining its relevance over time.

Shifting Landscape
Change is the only constant
 The products, clients, and business models that
defined your profitability yesterday will already be
in decay by tomorrow
 Don’t fall into the trap of associating your firm with
one specific business
 Brainstorming will always get shouldered-out by
more tactical concerns, unless you formally
entrench it in your process
 Today’s knowledge is tomorrow’s profit. Pay today
to earn tomorrow.
Legs

Who’s on the Bus?*
* This ‘Who’s on the Bus’ concept is cribbed directly from
the seminal 2001 book, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins
The most valuable assets are the human ones
 What matters is who is on the bus. Once we have the right people aboard, we can
drive the thing anywhere with a high probability of success
Legs  Flatten the organization. Give everyone
reasonable access to leadership
 Everybody keeps her/his hands on the work
 Get the fresh faces into the important
conversations

The Law of Inertia
Expect Negative Inertia
 Your prospective users will resist change, even if that change is in their
best interest
 Anticipate an immediate dip before
the eventual rise [the J-curve]
 Create structures that allow you to
fail without dying – optimize based on
learnings
 Humans are emotional creatures.
Make an impact by appealing to
the , not the
Legs

Eyes
Maximizing your Digital strategy is as
much about process as it is about insight.
Hands
Legs
“Geniusisonepercent
inspiration,andninety-nine
percentperspiration.”
--ThomasEdison

Eyes
Hands
Legs
Eyes provide the vision to see our place
in the market, as well as the activity of our
users.
Hands provide the means to swiftly build
solutions to meet the opportunities
discerned in the market.
And Legs provide the locomotion for us
to move from one business model to
another, in search of continued relevance
for the firm.

Eyes Eyes provide the vision to see our place
in the market, as well as the activity of our
users.
Hands provide the means to swiftly build
solutions to meet the opportunities
discerned in the market.
And Legs provide the locomotion for us
to move from one business model to
another, in search of continued relevance
for the firm.
Operationalize these attributes in your
strategy to create a profitable and scalable
Digital regime.
Hands
Legs

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