June 16, 2023

The power of a clear and compelling vision and purpose has been written about time and time again. It motivates, aligns and enables people to make better, more long term decisions.

So why do visions so often fail? What makes them end up being yet another worthless artifact on the garbage fire of corporate fads?

The reason? They do not  create the context for people to care about something meaningful to them that also aligns to why the organisation exists.

POEM offers a better way to approach product and organisation visions through workshops, guidance, and expertise to help you define what will work in your context to motivate the right people a sustainable way. When this is tied in with a Strong Product Definition and Meaningful OKRS POEM helps the whole organisation to evolve in a purposeful , compelling, and rewarding direction.

Attempts at using OKRs in complex environments fail when:

• The link between strategy and execution is overlooked
• Simplification is not seen as critical

Whilst a great OKR and intelligent measurement can undoubtedly unlock your potential, without an operating model that underpins the critical factors for success you may as well keep your current KPIs and annual targets.

POEM offers a structured approach with workshops, guidance, and expertise to help your organisation define your OKRS and supporting Metrics in a purposeful , compelling, and clear way. The POEM way creates alignment of objectives and measures  with the organizational purpose and values.

You may have heard about Operating Models before and maybe seen examples of what one can be. Although we don’t agree on all the definitions we’ve encountered – we do agree on one point – you need one!

The simplest explanation is that an operating model shares how an organisation wants to work. Underpinned by the vision of the leadership team it shows how all the parts come together to ensure a cohesive environment is created where the clients needs are met and teams flourish. Typical elements of an Operating Model could include: processes, talent management, vendor management, location stategy, technology and metrics.

A lot of people skip the step of designing an operating model as they feel it should be obvious how we all work together. In reality a lot of care and attention needs to be put in creating clear and practical working principles precisely so that it feels natural, organic and frictionless. With POEM’s help you can create or adapt your own Operating Model that would guide any reader to know what the goals and objectives are, and importantly, how they personally fit in.

The organisation is set up, tick. The process and protocols ready, tick. Everyone knows pretty much what they need to do, tick. Yet- something isn’t working – there are co-ordination breakdowns, miscommunications and people seem to have stopped being able to see the ‘bigger picture’.

Why?

Well, sometimes you need to go one step futher, just because a proceedure exists, it doesn’t mean people will expertly be able to navigate it. Just because management say ‘we invite feedback’ doesn’t mean teams can skillfully do it without some channels being created.

How often does one hear that the best collaboration happens organically, the so-called ‘water cooler chat’?  Well in this day and age, certainly with fewer water cooler moments occuring, it’s even more important to establish avenues throughout your organisation for feedback and conversation to flow in all directions, so that you really can have some diversity in opinions and keep everyone engaged.

In ProductOEM, we have a number of principles and techniques to share with you to help you in your organisation.

The popular aphorism goes: ‘People are your greatest asset’. No corporation worth its salt doesn’t have some sort of value statement around people, but oft-times the proclamations can feel hollow. We are not so cynical as to suggest they are in fact intentionally void, but what is usually true is that in organisations, strategy around people are usually framed as initiatives. Each one of these to remedy some trend that had been noticed (“We don’t have enough female engineers, let’s create a female hiring drive”, “people say they don’t get enough appreciation, let’s create a peer-to-peer recognition programme”, etc)

All of these are intended to improve a situation but of course initiatives run in isolation don’t tend to be able to affect very much or very widely in the long term. What they tend to be are small tweaks to a system that fundamentally isn’t focused on getting good people outcomes.

So when setting up your organisation, you need to have a coherent approach as to how you recruit, manage, support and grow your teams which isn’t at odds with other the other objectives of the organisation, rather they are part of the solutions. In POEM you will find a lot of useful guidance as to how to make talent and people truly core to your values.