Having a vision and implementing it too
Some companies have a vision which they don’t know how to translate into action. Some companies have a set of actions that don’t quite converge into an expected impact. Yes, you need to have a vision and do it too. How to take the first step from your vision to its implementation?
As I kept on digging deeper into the challenges of translating your vision into action, a friend recommended to look at the Kellogg Logic model and consider it in the terms of effectiveness and efficiency. Let’s dig into it together.
The Kellogg Logic model
I am almost ashamed to admit that I haven’t bumped into the Kellogg’s Logic model before. It is a simple way to look at your activities from the perspective of the intended results and the planned activities.
With respect to the planned activities you can map how the data you collect can be used to inform the activities you perform, which in turn shape the outputs you achieve.
Now let’s consider the intended results: here it would be wise to start with the intended impact, which can then be translated into outcomes and then outputs.
Another way to look at it is to see impact as your strategic vision, outcomes as your tactics, and inputs and activities as your operations. Outputs are the link that connects your operations with your tactics.
Inputs are in other words needs of your various stakeholders. Needs that you hope to address through our actions. For example, you have found out that your customers need more customization with respect to travel insurance when they are on the go. At the same time your investors are looking for a new idea to implement. Combined with it you can see the regulations for insurances becoming more liberal offering you the opportunity to enter the area that was previously restricted. This is al data that you might consider using as your input.
Activities means your backlog — the individual tasks that need to be performed in order to achieve a given output. This might mean figuring out the offer, the payment scheme, the technology, the design, the promotion, etc. These big activities will be further detailed for each particular task creating a ToDo list for the project team.
Outputs are the concrete substantiation of your activities and a tool to achieve your outcomes. In other words, you need your new app, your marketing campaign, the connection to your other systems, etc. to make this new offer work well.
These steps define the daily work happening at your company. Let’s move into the strategy and tactics now. I will start from the last one as, in my opinion, this is the way to cascade them.
Impact is, in fact, your vision. The North Star. The ambition you’ve got for your company. The tool for everyone there to stay challenged and motivated. The story that is being told about you.
We have the outcomes left. They define the possible impact that you can have today, which progresses your vision. In other words, you can collect your user research, look for indicators of what can positively impact your vision and aim to reach those outcomes.
Effectiveness and efficiency
If we look at the Kellogg’s Logic from the perspective of effectiveness and efficiency, it is quite obvious that your tactics (from impact to outputs) should be focused on efficiency. On reaching your goals in the best possible way. On the other hand, the left-hand side of the model is all about effectiveness: getting the best possible result with the least time and resources. And herein lays the challenge.
Let me get back to something I wrote about quite some time ago: that the design process is all about getting the right design and the design right.
If you think about it, the while first three steps (inputs, activities and outputs) are focused on getting the result that is created in the right way, the last two (impact and outcomes) aim at getting the right strategic focus. They demand to slow down and think about what it is that you want to do. And what it is that you don’t. Only after you know that, you can translate your vision into outcomes and then outputs.
The concept of Seidr
Yesterday on the Catching The Next Wave podcast, we talked to an executive director of R&D division at Canon Medical (this particular episode will be released on January 2020 as a part of Season 5). He talked about the ancient Nordic concept of Seidr (pronounced “SAY-der;” Old Norse for “cord, string, snare”). Seidr is a form of pre-Christian Norse magic and shamanism aiming to discern the course of fate to bring about change by weaving new events into being. Our guest said (I am paraphrasing here):
— If you want to change the world you need to elements: you need to have the vision, which is the realm of imagination. And you have to figure out how you can implant this change into the current beliefs and ways of acting of people. Some guys are just visionaries. They live in the world of fantasy. Some are executioners — they know how to impose and execute something. Both are unlikely to succeed as in order to ‘discern the course of fate’ you need both those elements. You need to understand the change you want to bring about. And you need to act within the context you are in. Only then the change has a chance to be ‘weaved into being’.
It is easy to be just the visionary with the grand vision too far-fetched to be implemented with results visible today. Or to be the executioner who delivers on the ToDo list. It’s like being the designer focusing on getting the right design and the engineer focusing on the getting the design right. Combining these two in a meaningful and consistent way is where the challenge lays.
Dilemmas
How to tackle it then? Perhaps the best way to start is to define who your as a company are and which space do you want to operate in. These are challenges that often are only implicitly addressed in any organization. Do you want to be a global or a regional company? Do you want to have a suite of products or just a few? Are you focused on service-deliver or experience-creation? Are you about saving time for your customers or helping them spend it well? These might be some of the dilemmas your business faces. The very first step is to find them, name them, prioritize them and [crucially!] define what they mean.
Since they are dilemmas, it is an unlikely situation that you will clearly identify yourself on one side of the scale. The much more probable situation is that you will tend to lean towards one side of the scale or the other. And if you do this exercise with a group of people, you will soon enough find out that your opinion might diverge from the opinions of others. This is the trigger for a discussion that ultimately should lead to making a list of things that you do and your don’t do as a company. This is the first step to translate your vision into a set of principles: the high level guiding heuristics to help you set the boundaries to your actions, outputs and outcomes.
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Aga Szóstek, PhD is an experience designer with over 19 years of practice in both academic and business world. She is an author of “The Umami Strategy: stand out by mixing business with experience design”, a creator of tools supporting designers in the ideation process: Seed Cards and the co-host in the Catching The Next Wave podcast.
