@jboogie
Building a culture of innovation
Agile, lean & design in a world of continuous digital change
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Steven Tyler!

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Steven Tyler!
Me! With hair.

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That’s him, there.

@jboogie
Yesterday’s
assumptions
don’t work in
today’s
realities
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That’s him, there.

@jboogie

@jboogie
"We poured surreal amounts of money into it, yet we all thought it had no
value for the customer, which was the biggest irony. Whenever anyone asked
why we were doing this, the answer was, ‘Because Jeff wants it.’ No one
thought the feature justified the cost to the project. No one. Absolutely no
one."

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“Software is
eating the
world”
-Marc Andreesen
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Now available on Spotify

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We translated this model to software

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Software is continuous
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11.6 seconds
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Sense
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Sense
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Respond

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Industrial era management tactics
don’t work with continuous software

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What does a continuous world
mean for the way we design our
organizations?
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How can we take advantage of
all of this information?
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How can we maximize the
creativity, learning and
productivity of our teams?
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In order to survive in a world of
continuous digital change,
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@jboogie
In order to survive in a world of
continuous digital change,
we must build a
culture of innovation
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@jboogie
A culture of innovation is a
culture of learning.
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Deliberate strategy

Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton

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Emergent Strategy

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@jboogie
“You need to set up and organize so
that you can do as many experiments
per unit of time as possible.”
Jeff Bezos
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The atomic unit of innovation
is the team
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How do we build continuously learning
teams?

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1. Anatomy of the team
How do we build continuously learning
teams?

@jboogie
1. Anatomy of the team
How do we build continuously learning
teams?
2. How do we incentivize the team?

@jboogie
1. Anatomy of the team
How do we build continuously learning
teams?
2. How do we incentivize the team?
3. How should the team work?

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Anatomy of the team
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Anti-patterns

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1. Siloed
2. Service providers
3. No view of “the whole”
4. No collaboration
How not to build innovative teams

@jboogie
1. Siloed
2. Service providers
3. No view of “the whole”
4. No collaboration
How not to build innovative teams

@jboogie
1. Siloed
2. Service providers
3. No view of “the whole”
4. No collaboration
How not to build innovative teams

@jboogie
1. Siloed
2. Service providers
3. No view of “the whole”
4. No collaboration
How not to build innovative teams

@jboogie@jboogie
What team structure facilitates a
culture of learning?

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Anatomy of a continuously learning team
1. Small

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Anatomy of a continuously learning team
2. Collocated

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Anatomy of a continuously learning team
3. Dedicated

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Anatomy of a continuously learning team
4. Self-sufficient

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Incentivizing the team
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Anti-patterns

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Roadmaps
You are here! Launch!

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They actually look like this
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@jboogie
How do others do it?
We don’t maintain a roadmap
document. Our roadmap is simply the
sum of active initiatives. We revisit the
set of prioritized initiatives every few
months.
http://tech.gilt.com/post/44792645000/scaling-agile-at-gilt
Gilt group

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Incentivized for creating output

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Shipping product, on its own, is not a
measure of success
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Most companies manage to output.

Because it’s easy. It’s binary.

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Task teams to achieve business outcomes
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Give teams a problem to solve, not a
solution to implement
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@jboogie

14%

Business model validation
Product validation
Small team
Culture / Infrastructure to support continuous learning
Stakeholders
Small-chunk, outcome-based, predictable funding
$$$

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How should the team work?
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Anti-patterns

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No cross-functional collaboration

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Fixation on job titles
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Jeff “Skunk” Baxter

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Jeffrey Allen Baxter, born December 13, 1948, is an American
guitarist, known for his stints in the rock bands Steely Dan and
The Doobie Brothers during the 1970s.
More recently, he has been working as a defense consultant and
chairs a Congressional Advisory Board on missile defense.

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Fear of failure

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Arbitrary deadlines

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Cover Your Ass
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How does a culture of learning
change the way a team works?

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Take smaller risks

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Clear definitions of success
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Promote competencies over roles
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@jboogie
Self organization
"The Six Sigma process killed innovation at 3M...they
would say they need a five year business plan for a
new idea. Come on, we don't know yet because we
don't know how it works, we don't know how many
customers will take it up, we haven't taken it out to
the customer yet."
Geoff Nicholson
Father of the Post It note
http://www.zdnet.com/six-sigma-killed-innovation-in-3m-7000012593/

@jboogie
Why should you build a culture of
innovation?

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Make customers happy

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Reduce waste by building more
successful products

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Increase employee morale

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You must transform
from a culture of delivery
to a culture of learning
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Thanks!
@jboogie
jeff@neo.com
www.sensingbook.com

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