The document discusses new imperatives for modern businesses to thrive in today's changing environment. It emphasizes the need to (1) question core assumptions through customer development, (2) focus on intrinsic motivation through autonomy, mastery and purpose to drive creativity, and (3) embrace agility through small, autonomous teams and frequent learning and adaptation. Examples are provided of companies like Google that foster creativity through initiatives like 20% time, and GitHub that thrived through a focus on customers, agility and small, distributed teams.

1. The New Imperatives for a Modern Business Kevin Donaldson

2. If you like these cartoons – they are created by Hugh Macleod See Hugh’s entire gallery at http://gapingvoid.com/

3. About the Speaker Twitter: kevnd kevin@donaldsoncrew.org Ent. Community

4. Familiar? We have been successful up until now so why change a working formula? We have all processes in our organization mapped and everyone knows what to do We are big enough where there is no risk from small startups My company/industry is stable – it has been around for X years We know what's best for our customers

5. It’s a New World ‘Global’ can apply to anyone Disruption is coming to an industry near you Wicked Problems are common Chaotic Environments are normal The nature of ‘employment’ is changing Intersectional Innovation happens more easily Geographic boundaries are meaningless

6. Recording industry Newspaper industry Book/magazine publishing Television Telecom Energy Automotive Education What was once stable…

7. Your organization need to match the relative stability of your environment

8. 3 Imperatives Why Who What How

9. Customer Development Who You must attack your assumptions at all times

11. This is Good… (Customer) Your Product is Awesome (You) Our Product is Awesome

12. (Customer) I am Awesome! [because of your product] This is what you want

13. Product Development What’s wrong with this model?

14. Customer Development Pivot Question your core business assumptions and find a market

15. Example File sharing across computers Hostile environment – many competitors MVP: Learning vs. Launching Put something in users hands to get real feedback Know where your target audience hangs out and speak to them in an authentic way Make something you will use If your customers don’t think they have a problem – hard to pitch a solution Traditional marketing isn’t always the best approach

16. Example First Pivots– market interest but expectations between cost and value not aligned Second Pivot – found an early adopter/paying customer; no additional customers Third (current) Pivot – new product; early adopter /paying customer to fund development Currently 20+ clients with thousands of users; approx. at transition of customer validation and customer creation – still carrying out micro pivots One Learning: In our market, software alone is not enough to satisfy the customer need

17. Your opinion, while interesting is irrelevant

18. The Customer Feedback Pivot

19. Intrinsic Motivation Why ‘Flow’ is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning

21. The carrot and the stick no longer have the power they once had

22. Task Time Technique Team the urge to get better and better at something that matters Autonomy Purpose Mastery Yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

23. Example Google 20% Time The real value of 20% is not the time, but rather the “license” it gives to work on things that aren’t important Open Culture and a quest for the pursuit of ideas Gmail, Google news Larry/Sergey: Montessori school philosophy influenced their ideas on 20% time

24. Example Autonomy is required to support agility Agile software dev practices promote autonomy Team decide on ‘tasks’ to support goals The Morning Dig: to provide individual focus time Hiring process helps select intrinsically motivated people Small teams eliminate slack and support a drive to mastery A mission that supports a larger purpose – why before what

25. Kevin’s Theory On Creativity Effectiveness/Efficiency Inflection Point Level/Type of Mental Stimulation Creativity Intrinsic Motivation Drivers Most Organizations 40 hrs Work Time

26. Organizational Agility How Can organizational design be beautiful?

28. Small is the New Big If you are small… Elance.com, Alibaba.com, cheep/free software tools remove location constraints Flat/elegant organizational design – don’t just create a doll house company Don’t be ashamed of being/staying small Focus, focus, focus If you are big… Create autonomous business units Force teams/departments to function like startups Constraints drive creative thinking Move to Agile execution

29. Business Model Agility

31. Example History Started in 1999 as a 3 person web consulting firm 2004 – decided to build project mgmt software for themselves for use with clients Clients wanted the software for their use Over 3 million users, millions in revenue Intentionally small – 16 people spread across 8 cities and 2 continents Invented and open sourced ‘Ruby on Rails’ Build products that intentionally are light on features No long term plans because they are scary and usually wrong

32. Example Success in using Agile for Product Development Using Agile (Scrum) as a management framework across the business Annual Strategic themes > Quarterly Goals reviewed each quarter, translated into monthly or bi-weekly sprints Add process when needed – test first Capital constraints force agile thinking One Lesson: Getting good at agile execution can put too much emphasis on throughput and actually enable a lack of focus

33. Organizational Rhythms Annual Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily Intra-day (Drive Gear of the Company)

34. Mapped processes take you a step closer to business commoditization

35. Lets Review

36. Who Why Creativity Time How

37. Books

38. Enlightened Discussion blog.kevindonaldson.me kevnd