Task: Ensure proper corporate strategy execution by systematically deducting a cascading set of unit and team goals. Identify overlaps and potential goal conflicts. Resolve inconsistencies and set up a common reporting and management structure.
My roles: Team Lead, Leadership Coach
Skills applied: Strategy Development, Strategy Execution, Organizational Development, Team Development, Coaching
In agile organizations, one of the goals is to establish a large degree of autonomy for individual units and thus reducing waste based on dependencies or constant re-alignment. To achieve this, we worked through the different organizational levels (company, units, teams) in order to map the respective functional and operational responsibilities. Coming top-down from the company purpose (and vision, mission and strategy), the unit and team goals / purposes were derived and further detailed in each layer.
Once the teams have completed defining their individual goals and purposes, a bottom-up check allowed to identify goals with considerable overlap and also gaps, where a certain need of one layer was not yet met by the layer below.
In a second step, the teams on one layer (i.e. those belonging to one unit) looked at how they jointly contributed to the overarching value generation. They established lead responsibilities for each of the value streams and identified interfaces between the teams, as well as areas that require continuous collaboration. Based on this alignment, initiatives were set up to optimize the handover at different interfaces, and to establish an operational setup for managing those areas that require ongoing collaboration. This resulted not just in an optimized flow across teams in the value generation, but also fostered a better understanding of corporate, unit and team strategies across the organization, allowing individuals to more autonomously take decisions within a jointly agreed framework.