When Transformation Drifts: Fixing Ownership, Decision Rights and Organisational Friction

Speaker 2

[00.00.16]

Hello and welcome to the enterprise TikTok podcast. I am Your Host Saumitra Kalikar. So the organizations spend enormous amount of time in developing strategies, transformation plans and investment priorities. But having a good strategy is one thing, but getting the whole organization to execute it consistently is entirely different. Problem. Why? Because the product is complete, the decisions slow down, the accountabilities become less and less clearer, and teams continue to work on projects which may or may no longer matter. And over a period of time, what gets delivered may be vastly different to what the executive is intended to start with. So where does this execution gap come from, and what separates organizations which translate the strategy successfully into great results? To explore these problems. I am joined today by Daniel Roth, founder of ShanPangeaEffect. Daniel brings more than 27 years of experience in operations and business transformation across industries and geographies. His work focuses on creating operating environments for organizations to help them translate their strategic insights into sustained performance. And Daniel is also the author of the book The E3 Effect. Daniel, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you here,

Speaker 1

[00.01.45]

Saumitra. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate all the themes that you've put together. And you know what has to change inside the business for technology to deliver on its promise. I think that's a useful conversation for leaders accountable for the results.

Speaker 2

[00.02.02]

Absolutely. I'm looking forward to that conversation. Um, but let's start with a very basic understanding of the gap between strategy and execution. Um, because when the transformation programs struggle, uh, most or most of the times the organizations think that there is something wrong with their strategy. But, um, I think your argument is that the problems really start when the strategy encounters the wider operating environment of the organization. Right? And so based on your experience, why do you think seemingly robust strategies can still, uh, struggle during execution? And what are the common factors or contributing factors that you have seen over the period of time?

Speaker 1

[00.02.49]

Yeah, some strategy is only as executable as the conditions around the people doing the work. So you can have a very clear ambition and mission as an organisation and still have people dealing with conflicting priorities, policies that point in another direction or decisions that have no authority to make. And so that's where I start looking. Can the people doing the work explain what the strategy means for their decisions today? And do they have the information and capability to act? And when the work crosses into another team, another department does the same priority. Travel with it. So better planning helps when the plan, um, is the problem. But oftentimes another planning cycle will not resolve an ownership issue that nobody wants to confront, and it will not create capacity if we keep adding priorities without taking anything away. At some point, I find that leadership has to translate their intent into operating choices. So just for an example here, I was brought into a healthcare organization to transform a contact center of more than 1100 people. And when I dug in, that work reached well beyond that singular operation. Finance, customer success, revenue management, and other teams all influenced what happened. So we had to understand the inputs, separate the constraints the people could control from those that they could not, and connect the work across those functions. And over roughly four years, our volume grew by 68%, while costs fell 57%. And I want to be careful because with that example, the results did not come from one technology or one team. Instead, we connected data, workflow technology, people and management discipline around that outcome. So for me, that's the practical lesson. If you want to understand the strategy execution gap, follow one important outcome all the way through the organization. Look at where the decisions wait, where the rules conflict, and where people compensate for that. That will tell you much more about the next leadership decision needed than another presentation on the strategy.

Speaker 2

[00.05.15]

Yeah. And this is a really good outline of the context setting for our conversation. Daniel, there are a few nuggets you already mentioned which I want to unpack throughout our conversation. Um, one thing you mentioned, um, is, uh, when the, uh, the transformation struggles, there are the implicit, ah, um, uh, reaction. A knee jerk reaction from the organizations typically is less another planning cycle. Let's refresh our strategy. And I've seen this in many organizations. Um, based on your experience, how effective is this, this, uh, approach and and if not, what is the organization should, should do?

Speaker 1

[00.05.57]

Yeah. I, I would start with is the strategy, uh, something that's been well thought through and documented. And then I would ask leaders in the organization to tell me if I was a CEO or the board, I would be going to leaders in the organization. And each leader can do this to their next level and skip levels through the organization and say, tell me what the strategy is. What are we up to as a business? What are we trying to do? And if they can't replicate that, then the first thing is to to address actually the communication around your strategy. And it might be that your strategy is not clear enough. So let's start there. You need a really clear, well-documented, uh, strategy. But once you've done that, then I would ask the next question, which is there a direct line from the top line strategy of the business overall to the frontline team member and each area of the business and the work that they do, and can they connect the work they do to why that matters for the strategy? And if the answer is not yes throughout every role in the organization, then that's a place to look. Is why is there a gap between what someone thinks that they must do in their daily work, and why that does not connect directly to the strategy? Why they don't see that?

Speaker 2

[00.07.22]

Yeah, yeah. Um, the one thing I always have seen that when the transformation programs are done right, of course, that, uh, the the they do not struggle overnight. Right. There is a gradual kind of start moving away from their intended goals. Right? Um, again, based on your experience, uh, what kind of early signals that, uh, the leaders should watch for to to really see? Yes. Their strategy is on track, uh, from execution perspective. Or now we are actually potentially drifting away from our, our objectives.

Speaker 1

[00.08.03]

Yeah. I think we have to start with one thesis, which is execution rarely break breaks all at once. It drifts. And I use that term for the gradual separation between what leadership intends and what actually happens in the day to day work. So what that looks like is a local workaround can be perfectly, perfectly understandable. Someone's trying to help a customer or get through the work for the day, but then the workaround becomes routine. Another team then develops a different version, and before long the process leadership thinks it's managing and the process people actually use are different things. So the early signs are often quite ordinary. The same exception coming back again and again, a decision repeatedly moving up the hierarchy. People keeping their own records offline because they do not trust the shared information that everyone has. I also pay attention to like when individual teams report success, but then customers, their internal or external stakeholders are still experiencing delay or having to repeat themselves. What I have found oftentimes is competing priorities make this much, much harder. Um, if we tell people your job is to improve quality, increase throughput, increase throughput, and support a new initiative without resolving the trade offs between those, then they're going to make those trade off decisions themselves. And under pressure, the most immediate demand tends to win. So that does not necessarily mean that the people have lost their commitment to the strategy. It may mean we left them to reconcile instructions that can not all be satisfied at once. So my response here would be to get close to the work before issuing any other instructions. Ask a team member to show you how a recent case actually moved through the operation. Where did it stop? Uh, what did they have to work around? What could have made the decision that would have kept it moving? Then address the condition behind that pattern. That might mean something as simple as clarifying a rule or removing a competing demand, or moving a decision to the right level in the organization. But give the change an owner and a review. Date a check in date. I want the people around me to feel safe showing me the workaround. So if my response is to punish the people that reveal that I'm going to lose access to that information I need. So the aim is to make the operating system more reliable before the drift becomes visible in the headline results.

Speaker 2

[00.10.51]

Yeah. And when this trip becomes significant, um, what role do you see leadership plays? Um, uh, what role? You see the organizational culture plays. Um, and or do you see this is just a inevitable consequence of running a complex, transformational program.

Speaker 1

[00.11.15]

I think everyone plays a role in this. So, um, leadership's job and responsibility and accountability is to set a clear direction. So they set up the guardrails. What needs to be done when it needs to be done by as well as it needs to be done determining the what quality level compliance. If it's a regulatory area. Right. Making sure that everything stays legal and within the confines of the law. Um, and then the frontline team members are responsible for actually completing the work. They're also responsible for asking questions when they're not clear. And it's leadership's responsibility to listen to, to hear that and to be vulnerable enough to to look at themselves and say, maybe I could have done a better job explaining this. So years ago, I was leading a team. I was a I was a younger manager and I was leading a team. And one of my supervisors came up to me. There was there was a significant change that we were putting into place as an organization, and it was going to impact everyone across the team, all of their workflows in their day to day. And I thought I did a really good job putting together what the the very specifics of it. What were the specific changes, why the changes were happening, what the impact on them would be. And, and and some of the expectations later that manager, the supervisor that I had a trusted relationship with came up to me and goes, Daniel, um, we heard you, but I want you to know that everyone walked away really upset and slightly confused. But more than anything, they walked away without hope because your message was tone deaf. And that really landed on me because she said, I gave a lot of the right information, but what I missed from my communication was to create hope in the change, that the change was going to be for something better. So what I've learned over the years from that message is, first, a leader's job is a great hope. And their job is to create teams that win. And individuals need to know what winning looks like. One reason why sports is so popular is because it's very clearly defined with a rulebook and referees on what the rules of the game are and what winning looks like. One team scores more than another, right? Businesses can apply that same concept inside their own business. Yeah, that's a great analogy. Um, one thing I want to unpack with you is the the implication of operating model and whether it constraints and or enables execution of transformational programs. And the reason I say this is, um, more and more organizations are now moving towards more decentralized autonomous teams, right? Um, uh, it's a product operating model, right? And, uh, now that works well for individual teams because they have more autonomy and decision making authority and for small changes within their remit. It works really well because more efficient.

Speaker 2

[00.14.30]

But the transformation programs, they they behave differently because they require, by definition, multiple teams coming together to deliver some common set of objectives. Right. Um, so in that, in this context, how do you see these, these autonomous teams, uh, operating model plays a role, uh, how much it creates a constraint in terms of executing transformation programs or it actually enables it.

Speaker 1

[00.15.01]

Yeah, I think in the most successful organizations that I've had the opportunity to work with is they recognize that the stakeholder experience, the customer experience is the whole journey, and that includes the gaps between the departments. So internally, oftentimes a ownership and measures of success look at one function at a time. Billing right service support execution right delivery. That creates a very practical problem though from an experience standpoint for the consumer, which is everyone can be doing what they're asked to do in the organization, but the overall outcome can still suffer. So when I look at an operating model, I want to know who owns the outcomes, what decision that person can actually make. And what happens when two teams have competing priorities. And what I've learned over the years is a name on a slide or an a RACI matrix does not resolve those questions. And so I have a healthcare transformation example that I could share where that an outcome, the one was not being experienced in the context center, um, because of any one input. But many of the inputs came from elsewhere. Into the contact center, and the contact center was responsible for scheduling appointments. Well, to schedule appointments you need doctors available, right? You need to make sure that you collect the right funds. You need to make sure that the insurance information is correct. So that way is collecting the right information. And you can say, yes, we can accept you as a patient or we cannot. You have to know what co-pay is. So there's a lot of information there that comes from other areas. So we can't simply ask a group in this, in this particular scenario, a contact center to improve and leave finance, revenue management policy and other dependencies outside the conversation. Those relationships are all part of the work. And the same is true when a technology team delivers a capability. But the business process itself does not change. Delivery, ownership and ownership outcome have to connect. So someone needs to be accountable for whether the capability is making the work better, with access to the people who can resolve the constraints. And that doesn't mean one person gets unlimited authority. I want clear boundaries. What? The team can decide. What requires consultation, what genuinely needs escalation? And those boundaries should reflect the consequences of the decision. So governance is one thing that helps when and this is a key part, when it makes those choices clearer and catches risks at the right time. On the on the other side, it becomes bureaucracy or red tape when the same decision moves through several meetings and nobody adds useful judgment or accepts responsibility for resolving it. So I would ask a leadership team to examine one recurring approval. What risk is it controlling? Who is qualified to make it? What information do they need? And could the routine cases move within agreed limits with the exceptions receiving the closer attention? And that's how I think about improving the operating model, making important decisions explicit. Then give the people doing the work a dependable way to move forward through that.

Speaker 2

[00.18.34]

Yeah. And I think you've mentioned this partly, but I just want to unpack this further. Um, that is having a clear view on decision rights, in my view, plays an important role. And how do you balance that out as to how what kind of decisions, um, individual teams can make, for example, versus this being a transformational program, what kind of decisions should be elevated for to make sure that their end to end impacts are very clearly understood? Yeah, I think there's quite a bit to unpack in that. But but some but some basic principles for, for your listeners, for the listeners here are um, most things do not need to be done at 100% perfection. Some things do, but most things do not. So the question is how far away from perfection is good enough or great enough right to be able to to meet the need? Um, and so when you think about it from that perspective. Part of developing others is giving them the opportunity to fail. As they build their skill set. And so some things might be may be good enough at 80% of the output. You would do potentially a presentation to a team that, um, that doesn't need to be at the level that a C-suite would see, right? Um, but it needs to have a level of polish to it, but maybe not the level that you're skilled to generate. Give someone else a chance to develop it, then have them sit with you or send it off to you, and you look at it and give them some constructive criticism on how to improve it and go from there. So I would look at that. The other thing is what is the value to the business and what is the risk to the business.

Speaker 1

[00.20.22]

The greater the risk, the higher likelihood. You'll either. You'll want a very concrete, repeatable, consistent methodology and workflow for approving certain steps that are completed. The higher the risk of the business, the more that needs to be in place. That can be fully automated at the click of a button to with a bunch of checks to something that, uh, that needs to go through another level or two of approvals when the risk is great enough to the business. But that would be some ways that you could look at.

Speaker 2

[00.20.54]

Yeah. And again in this scenario, because the teams are autonomous. I think one one thing which I have seen in uh, is uh, potentially teams having their own other set of priorities, which they want to progress and pursue. Um, um, whereas transformation demands potentially a bit more not necessarily aligned, but different set of priorities. Right. And it always is a struggle as to, for, for even teams to justify why their priorities are important and what some of sometimes some sort of politics emerges out of it as well. Uh, what is your guidance from leadership perspective? Uh, how they should define guardrails and how they should actually navigate this, where transformation objectives should be realized, but at the same time, so the immediate needs the teams have to deliver their immediate OKR, for example, uh, should also be should also be met.

Speaker 1

[00.21.56]

Yeah, I would do a few things here. One is, um, if you if you actually look for very specific, repeatable pain points that are in the way of the work being pleased. So you talk about an OKR, right? Or a KPI that must be met. And so autonomous team, if something is consistently in the way in some organization they call firefighting, some organizations call it friction. There's a lot of different names for this. Um, but basically it's a repeated problem that consistently occurs. Um, then have the team start to unpack, count how often this occurs. It's very simple. You can start a ticker of how often this occurs that allows for frequency to report back. How long is the impact on the team for each one. So start to measure the time of the impact. If there's actually dollars lost, um or or um errors made right, then you can track that that is important to someone else in the organization most likely. And when you start to bring this into conversations, we've identified this repeated problem. We've been able to identify, um, how often it occurs, what the what the impact is on the business. To this extent, it might not be to 100% of what the business needs, but even to 80%, right, do most of the work. And we've done some brainstorming. And here's a potential solution or two that we'd like to put forward. What other ideas you have come curious to the session, but come with your own idea. Come with your own solution, your own path. Even if it's hey, this is not just my team. We actually, I would love if we can just get a meeting going with the other group. Maybe they don't know the problems they're causing over here and we can just talk it through.

Speaker 2

[00.23.41]

Yeah, yeah. Um, the other thing I wanted to discuss with you and get into, get your thoughts on is, uh, the and which I have seen is, uh, many times what happens is when the transformation program sets objectives or it shifts its direction. Um, uh, because the business priorities change. Um, uh, it's always difficult to stop some, some initiatives which may no longer be aligned to the change in the direction of strategy. Right. Um, why do you how you are posting, how often you see this, this, this, this scenario happening and why it is so difficult to to stop serving right initiatives in your in your experience?

Speaker 1

[00.24.29]

Yeah. Um, I think that's a great question. So when I think about teams and individuals that come to work, they want to feel like their work matters. And the longer they've been there, the more likely they feel like their work matters. And that's why they keep showing up, right? Hopefully doing good work. We're talking about people doing good work and just the company for some reason needs it, and they now need these individuals to do other work. So at one organization where we have this transformation happen, there was a very steep team ten plus years tenure in love with their processes. Their processes worked well, but the business was moving to a more digital from analog world. And that was going to leave them behind. And so as a leader, I had to figure out how to communicate to them that this change was going to be happening and that everything that they did was going to be pivoting over the next couple of years and how to make them feel valued in the process. So the way that I spoke with them about it was that what we're what the company is doing is they're moving from analog to digital. Here's why. Here's what's going on. There's going to be an impact on how we have to do our work, as with the rest of our organization. We're all in this together, right? It's not just you alone being singled out. And the work that we have to do now is going to stand on the shoulders and the foundation of all the great work you've done so far. So while it's going to look really different, we couldn't pivot at the pace that we need to if we didn't do the work that we did. Right. Because I'm now taking what they've done. I'm working to get their buy in. As I shared before, I truly believe individuals and teams want to win, and they just need leaders to give them hope that they can be part of that winning team. And what does winning look like? So by walking them through what is needed from them, how what they've done before applies or no longer applies, and how we're going to help set them up for success is absolutely critical. The other part is, every new priority that we that I give them needs a conversation about what's going to come off the list that they were doing before. Otherwise, what sounds like strategic focus at the top becomes just a growing queue of competing commitments for them. Right. And they have less and less capacity to deliver the outcomes that the strategy depends on. So, um, like when I think about this, this is where endeavour comes into. E3 for me is the discipline of following the work through to its results, learning from what those results tell us, and adjusting our effort so we keep moving forward toward the vision together. So an initiative can meet every milestone while contributing very little to the outcome we actually need. Right. That's that low level work. Um, and so that's why I want the regular management conversation to include a more demanding question. If we deliver this exactly as planned, what will be different for the business and how does that help fulfill the vision? So if you notice, I'm putting the work with the behavior, with the vision all into one conversation. From there, we can examine the evidence to decide whether to continue change or stop together and understand what other work we're delaying by people keeping people committed on the lower level work. Right? So we also need a thoughtful definition of value compliance, maintenance, resilience type work protect the organization's ability to to deliver even though they don't appear as new revenue. Right. So the question is whether we understand that contribution well enough to make the informed trade off. And leaders just have to make this conversation possible. Um, for CIOs and transformative transformation leaders, that's the connection I keep visible the vision, the outcomes that will fulfill it, and the work receiving our people's time endeavor means staying accountable for that connection as conditions change, so the vision becomes something people can see in the results they deliver every day.

Speaker 2

[00.28.47]

Yeah. And I think you rightly said that when, when the teams get started getting, uh, working on a particular project or initiative, they, they tend to get emotionally involved, um, into that work and they kind of find that they own it. And then for them to change that, stop it and focus something is always a difficult thing. And that's where the that conversation that you mentioned, a holistic conversation, really plays a vital role. Just to unpack there. Uh, what I have seen is that typically that is not factored in the strategy articulation itself. That comes as an after fact that you have defined a strategy. So now what kind of conversation, how much do you see? Do you think it is important to make it part of the strategy, articulation itself, as to make it very clear what choices we are making and why we are making these choices, so that it becomes very clear and obvious for the teams as to why we are shifting in a different direction.

Speaker 1

[00.29.50]

Yeah, I think, um, a couple a couple of thoughts come to mind here. One is leadership is many things. One of the one of the things is the ability to influence people, to do something different than they're doing now. And so to do that as part of the strategy also needs a very strong communication plan. And that communication plan needs to take into consideration what some of the concerns and worries might be that the that those impacted have not because a decision needs to be changed about the strategy or how fast you move forward, but because those concerns or worries might be about something that actually impacts the strategy, that the leaders are not aware that they don't have visibility to. So oftentimes there's there's institutional knowledge. There's knowledge that isn't quite documented, right? That people that people do in their positions, the work they do. And leaders don't always know everything. So coming in with the with the part of curiosity and asking questions around how will this impact you and what are the things that we're not thinking about in our strategy that we need to consider and we should be considering? That's what I want to hear from you before we make any final go decisions. Right. And so I think bringing them in, letting them be part of the discussion that breaks through some of the emotional barrier they're still going to go through. In my book, I talk about change management, and I believe that change management individuals go through the five, the five stages of grief. Um, you know, and each person handles it differently. Um, and each person might go through different stages at different points. So as a leader, you need to be prepared for whichever stage someone is in. If they're in the upset, if they're in denial, they're in acceptance. Right. Um, you know, anger. Uh, so so that's just part of the process. Mhm.

Speaker 2

[00.31.50]

Yeah. Look, I wanted to shift our discussion a little bit to have more focused conversation around, around AI. Um, because as you know, I know no conversation is complete in these days without uh, mentioning here. Uh, but AI is a particular case where, uh, it requires a lot of collaboration from different parts of the organization. It's no longer just a technology problem, right? Um, you really need risk. You need legal. You need other type of, uh, parts of the business to come together. Right. Um, based on your experience, how how many times organizations tend to see this as an er, technology solution or technology problem to be solved versus building the holistic, um, um, the operating model around or governance around, um, enabling AR.

Speaker 1

[00.32.47]

Yeah. All too often, sadly, I see it's still a technology driven conversation. Sometimes it's driven from from a leader who's hyper aware of AI and all of the conversation around the efficiencies that can bring to the business, the savings, the the opportunities, but they don't actually come with we're trying to solve a specific problem that we can't solve with another tool. They're not. What I'm finding too often is they're coming from we want to drive efficiency. That's not a problem to solve. That's an output. That's a lag measure from outcomes that you generate from other problems that you solve in the business. And so, um, all too often I see it's not a holistic decision that technology gets brought in. At one organization they went and they and they bought a, a C contact center as a, as a software AI solution that had a bunch of AI capabilities in it. And when we started digging into and going through the build process, we came to realize that they had not fully accounted for all the ways they wanted to use AI, and they had miscalculated the tokens. And so their budget was five six digits short from what it needed to be, because they just missed really thinking through holistically, what is this software bring us? What does this tool bring us from an AI? How can we apply it? And having that fully thought out before they went and procured the tool. And so now they're having to go back to finance and go, hey, by the way, this great tool that we budgeted that we have plan seven digit purchase by the way here. Um, we we need some additional dollars. We need six digits plus for this because of AI and the gains we can get from that, it becomes a lot harder to sell the second time around. The other thing is, um, I find that organizations um, here's the thing about AI in my mind is that it will amplify exponentially what already exists in the business. So if the business has lack of documentation and lack of order around the work, and individuals just kind of step in and out and do what they like and they have version control issues, the AI is not is going to actually potentially harm the business more than helping where if another business is well documented, has version control but then governance right integrations. The AI is going to amplify and accelerate what they're up to in a significant way, most likely. Last piece of this I'll talk about, which is that that that I've seen a lot is companies are bringing AI, but they are not putting into their strategy plan development plans for their leaders on how to utilize the AI, how to maximize and optimize AI. They're doing that after the fact, after the AI has been purchased, procured, and implemented, and they're expecting to get the gains and they're like, wait, oh, my team doesn't know how to write a prompt. My team doesn't know you know how to use this.

Speaker 2

[00.36.00]

Yeah. And in this specific operating model, um, uh, changes or areas that organizations should consider, in your view, to make AI more scalable, uh, within the organizations.

Speaker 1

[00.36.15]

Yeah. And the operating model that I would that I would propose is one that is is well known and that is to really document out your use cases. Um, as, as clearly as you can and bring in all the parties that will be part of this. So, uh, a working system still needs a viable path from information to action. And so, you know, I'll just give you a quick example at one construction company. Um, equipment could block the view of a camera that was otherwise functioning properly for project management offices during Covid. Off property could actually see the the construction underway. There's equipment blocking it. And this matter because the customers, the project managers, depended on those images. Well, one service person at this organization could cover about 600 sites. So relying on that support person to notice every obstruction manually was just not realistic. And that organization, we trained the visual AI to identify likely obstructions, but the useful change did not stop at recognition. We then moved from a monitoring dashboard to targeted alerts and connected those alerts to the service workflow. And the point there was to help the person act right before or to act before the customer discovered the problem. Right. So we knew what the problem was, and we knew we wanted to solve it, and we brought the technology in to solve it. So find those pain points that are repeated over and over. And before automating that, I would ask why each step exists. What steps protect quality or control risk, which compensate for an old limitation that is no longer applies. Where does the customer wait and who has the authority to remove that delay? Otherwise, we can just spend a great deal making a necessary step happen faster, and then we get that low level we're talking about.

Speaker 2

[00.38.19]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Um, Daniel, as we start wrapping down, I want you to definitely get your unpacking a little bit more about your framework, the E3 framework, uh, a bit more. Um, and, and so far we have discussed around about transformation programs. Right. Um, but the fact is that organizations and teams, individually, they want to be efficient in their continuous, incremental technology change that happens day to day basis. Right? Um, so in that context, I want you to understand how does your E3 framework apply? But probably also providing context. What is E3 framework? What does it stand for and what are its practical applications?

Speaker 1

[00.39.06]

Absolutely. So E3 stands for enable, Empower and Endeavor. And um, and so it comes down to three practical questions. Enable is have we given people what they need to succeed? Are we hiring the right people for fit? Are we giving them the right training? Are we giving them access to the right tools? Um, and then empower. The question is, do they have the trust and authority to own their work? And so have you set up the right guardrails in place. Have you set up the right knowledge structure in place? Have you defined workflows sufficiently they can trust? If that workflow is followed, that you don't need to step in and check on it all the time. And do you have the right alerts in place when when it's not followed to notify you as a leader? Endeavor is are we following through or is there by, in by the team, by the company, by the, the people in the organization? And are they working towards fulfilling the mission? Are they following through? Are they learning? Are they improving? I purposely don't use the word execute. And I use the word endeavor because to execute is complete a task to complete something. Endeavor is what a true business is. It's endeavoring for a strategy. And I've never seen a company that's highly successful. When they achieve their strategy to just stop, they create a new strategy, right? The strategy continues to evolve. Well, that's because they're endeavoring and endeavoring gives people purpose. So together, those questions helps leaders see what's needed to helps leaders see what needs to change around our people so they can deliver consistently, excellently, and do it in a manner that meets the business strategy.

Speaker 2

[00.41.08]

Yeah. And do you have any specific tools or techniques, uh, to make this framework, um, uh, to implement this framework within the organization?

Speaker 1

[00.41.21]

Yeah, there's, there's quite a few, uh, tools and techniques that I have. And, um, if, if someone wants to pick up my book, the E3 effect, it really walks through step by step. What that is, there's there's, uh, self-assessments in there. There's workshops in the book, and then there's visuals as well to help those that are visual learners. Um, on, on on what's needed, what's needed to move through the process. Um, but at the at at the at the end of the day, it's really just taking a look at the conditions of the work and making sure the conditions support the strategy. And support the work and the E3 effect are a set of standards that help you achieve these. So if you're seeing that your team is not aligned and doing the work that your strategy needs, you might be a good candidate to pick up the E3 effect.

Speaker 2

[00.42.23]

All right. Look, um, on the the before we wrap up, the last, probably the last question for me is, uh, coming back to our conversation about transformation. If a CIO, for example, he recognizes that the transformation program is struggling, is drifting away. Right. And he wants to, um, get get it back on to on, on on the track. What are maybe 1 or 2 things uh, you would advise CIO to, to act on?

Speaker 1

[00.42.58]

Yeah. I think performance becomes repeatable when learning changes how the work is done. So this is where I use the enable, empower and endeavor together. Enable asks whether people have the clarity, capability, knowledge, tools and processes to succeed. That's something a CIO can look at, empower, ask why do they have the ownership, trust and authority and make decisions to work with the work requires? This is where the CIO can engage the business leaders to make sure that those are working together. And endeavor is a discipline of executing, measuring, learning, and improving over time. They're connected. And so in transformation work, we connect long range strategy to annual priorities, shorter roadmaps, quarterly reviews, and then monthly, weekly and daily management of the work. And the purpose was to keep decisions at different levels connected. Daily problems could reveal something that needs a broader change, and strategic priorities had to reach the work people were actually doing. So, um, each organization will be a little bit different with which meetings make sense, but look at the business outcome, the operating signals that influence it, and the quality and cost of delivery would be my recommendation. A faster process that creates more rework. Rework needs a different conversation from a faster process that reliably resolves the customer's need. So my practical advice here to a CIO, CTO, or a transformation leader is to start with one important outcome make its ownership and decision rights clear. Review the evidence with the people doing the work and act on what you learn. That's the discipline behind the work I do through Pangaea Effect and the thinking in the E3 effect as well.

Speaker 2

[00.44.51]

On that note, Daniel, thanks. Thanks for the time. One of the takeaways for me is, um, as you said, uh, if the transformational program is struggling, um, uh, the your the to address the capital strategy and execution is not necessarily always to create another strategy. Uh, but it's more focusing on understanding where the problem lies in terms of clarity, ownership, decision rights and so on and so forth, and address those. Right. Um, yeah. And E3 effect is, is a new framework even for me. So I'm definitely looking forward to understand everything better. But otherwise thanks for your time again, Daniel. It was really great seeing you.

Speaker 1

[00.45.34]

Thank you for having me. And, uh, thank you again.

Speaker 2

[00.45.37]

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