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What links together Vision, Strategy,
Roadmaps, Agility and Innovation?
A non-brief journey to the underlying dynamics of successfully-
conducted teams and businesses
Vision, Strategy, Roadmaps, Agility/”Agile”, Innovation… I see more and
more people getting confused about what is what and how these ingredients
play together into the success of a business endeavor.
In reality, they all belong to a synchronized process underlying all businesses
and all companies. For many of them, the most successful ones, these
concepts belong to their intuitive and natural way of being thus doing
business. They simply are part of their MO in a way that requires no
explanation or no cognitive effort. It simply is what they do and even more
what they are.
For others, they represent a constant struggle to understand how to succeed
on a permanent, non-transient way. Too many businesses feel the pain of
starting with a big bang and then hitting an asymptotic plateau from they
seem to be unable to recover and reignite their growth trend.
So, this is my very personal attempt at creating a holistic, self-contained
explanation of what these things are, individually, and most of all how they
all play together in some sort of musical script that spans from Vision to
Strategy, then from Strategy to Roadmap, then again from Roadmap to
Agility so that in the end, all together, determine the most important outcome
of the entire process: Innovation, the Holy Grail relentlessly sought after by
modern companies.
I drew these conclusions based on a very large body of work of others who
have provided a ton of literature on these subjects as well as on my 25+ years
of experience leading teams of professionals in many different fields, some of
them remarkably more challenging and … deadlier… that others. In all these
years and across all those different fields, I have always conducted myself
hence my leadership efforts according to the same dynamics I describe here.
In my personal and professional experience, it works. I hope it works for you
too.

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The journey
Vision
Vision: your company’s vision is your mission statement, written down for
the exclusive sake of your own people not for your PR campaign. Vision is
who you are at your core, what value are you trying to bring to your clients,
eventually. It’s your sense of purpose. Your vision states why what you do
matters and to whom: what problem(s) are you solving for what customer. It
can be a few words like “shortening the time it takes to convert customer
orders into vehicle deliveries” (Toyota) or “IBM would supply computing
power as if it were water or electricity” (IBM) or it can go into more details.
What it cannot be is a marketing statement that means nothing and gives no
direction (although it makes for good PR): “We want to deliver the best-in-
class tools for the financial community”. What does it even mean? If I am an
employee of this company and need to make a timely crucial decision, how is
this statement giving me a direction about what I should practically choose
amongst all possible alternatives? (Richards, 2004)
Vision states what your Core is, hence (by exclusion) what is NOT your Core
(i.e. what constitutes your Context instead). By doing so, it helps you decide
what you do and most of all what you do NOT do, what you should say YES
to and what you should say NO to; soon you will realize that you have to (or
you should) say NO to a lot of things that will distract you from achieving
your Vision (that includes letting your clients design your product, for
example). (Moore, 2008)
Strategy
Strategy: your Strategy defines how you are going to deliver on your Vision.
Strategy translates present goals into future actions needed to achieve them
and it does it in a way that aligns your vision with your current but most of
all your future required capabilities and constraints. As such, Strategy tells
you what you need to change in your current business/organization in order
to achieve your vision in the predicted time frame. Strategy is a way to create
valuable response to ever-changing conditions while trying to reach a goal
(your Vision) by producing viable and timely options to do that. So, the
Strategy is not the options per se but the process to respond to changes and
creating those options within the general purpose you aim to. As such,
Strategy is not a plan or a set of plans or a Roadmap. Strategy is how you

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create and change those plans according to the (multiple) options that you
come up with in order to deal with changes and achieve your final scope.
(Richards, 2004)
As you can imagine based on what we said above, there cannot be a Strategy
without a Vision, a “direction” shared by the entire company. The Vision
coupled with the Strategy provides the “culture” of your company, i.e. the
“intuitive knowledge” for your people to know what to do and how to do it
without being micro-managed. A clear Vision and a shared Strategy re-
inforce the trust and create the culture your company needs to thrive: Vision
sets the direction and the goal, Strategy charts the path across unknown
terrain and mutable conditions; together they foster a climate of mutual trust
(horizontally as well as vertically) and provide what needed for your
employees (at any level) to work “intuitively” towards the final goal,
individually and as groups.
Roadmap
Roadmap: “To think that you can predict what needs to be done a year from
now is sheer arrogance” (Richards, 2004). As anybody who ever served and
happened to be in a combat situation knows, it does not matter how good
your plan is or how much time and data/analytics you spent to build it, or
how thoroughly you back-tested and stress-tested it: your plan will miserably
crumble as soon as you make first contact with the enemy. As such, a
Roadmap that is a deterministic, detailed plan based on super-reliable and
complete data about the past (as by definition we cannot have reliable nor
complete data about the future) is mostly a waste of time if not a concrete
danger (as it restricts your field of vision and constraints your ability to come
up with new options to face the now mutated reality). So what you do when
you make first contact with the enemy and you super-plan deflates in front of
you? You adapt, improvise and overcome by drawing upon the trust (in
yourself, in your unit, in your commanders and everybody else under them
to act based on the same principles, to achieve the same goal) and the
“intuitive knowledge” (to determine what is “right”) that a clear Vision and a
shared Strategy provides you with.
So, we do not need Roadmaps? Absolutely YES, we do need them. We need
Roadmaps that first and foremost reminds us of the Vision and the Strategy,
then provides us with the possible options that we have in a reasonably short

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period of time to start implementing a path to our goals; it will quickly
abandon prescriptive actions as soon as we move further out from the
immediate future and will instead replace them with increasingly less defined
milestones based on well explained assumptions. The further away we move
out in time, the more assumptions become relevant, rather than actions or
milestones, as knowing what assumptions determined the milestones and
whether they still hold true (when we get to that time) will help us decide
whether those milestones still make sense or not. As such, a valuable and
helpful Roadmap becomes a summary of what assumptions we have made to
determine our path at each and every time in the future and accordingly,
what milestones we have logically derived from them. If at any time, one of
the assumptions is not verified, we immediately know that we cannot rely on
the Roadmap anymore and we need to step back into evaluation, not
execution, mode. This is what a Roadmap is and this is what it is helpful for.
Anything else, as Richards stated above, is “sheer arrogance”.
Agility/”Agile”
Agility: let me start by making very clear what agility is NOT and what
being “agile” (or implementing “agile”) means NOT.
First and foremost, agility is NOT changing course every two weeks or “as
needed” with no cost and no consequences to be dealt with. If I draw a line
on the ground and ask you to walk it straight from end to end but you fail to
keep yourself steady on course and start stepping right and left off the line,
struggling to go back to its center, then you are not agile: you have an
attention deficit/severe lack of motorial coordination at best or you are just
plain drunk! Pick one but I am sure neither represents a benchmark you want
to steer your company towards. From this point of view, Agility is the exact
opposite: agility is the ability to stay on course, on the line or as close as
possible to it, no matter what, i.e. despite the fact that I have set up hurdles,
pot-holes and obstacles along it and I may be throwing flaming rolling barrels
to steer you off course or make you trip up.
Second, agility and “agile” as your target operating model is NOT about
being able to do everything by magically multiplying the productivity of your
people, so that you do not have to make those awkward choices between
competing goals. Being agile is NOT about suddenly being able to do what
you could not do before with the same amount of resources because

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somehow now you can jump from improving your architecture runway to
doing small win enhancements. Agility does not multiply your forces. Agility
does not mean your forces can do more with less either. That would require
some sort of an exoskeleton and unless you are Tony “Iron Man” Stark….
Sorry… you do not have one. On the contrary, implementing “agile” means
forcing you to create absolute alignment amongst the entire production
function, from Sales down to Marketing, passing by Product and Engineers,
so that everybody understand the criteria upon which you make those
awkward choices while helping you deliver in production to your clients the
results of those hard choices faster and with a higher level of predictability
and client satisfaction. If you think that “implementing” agile means no more
hard choices, no more saying NO to clients, sales, engineers or top managers
because now I can get everything done… think again! Agile is the exact
opposite: Agile brings those hard choices up-front, in the face of everybody
and forces you to prioritize them based on an intrinsically economic
decisional framework; by doing so, it leverages the “alignment” between all
departments and all teams to understand why those choices have been made,
why those items have been prioritized so to avoid surprises and lack of
coordination. “Agile” democratize those choices by decentralizing decisions
and by providing all those involved with a standard economic criteria (the
shortest weighted ….) that does not require a centralized authority (“the
boss”) to make sound calls. If you try to be “agile” but you still make
decisions in a centralized, hierarchical, authoritarian way (“do this because
that top manager does not want to receive calls from client ABC anymore”)
then you are many things (for sure) but never agile.
So what IS “agility”? “Agility” is the ability to face unpredictable changes
and react to them to stay on course according to your Vision, your Strategy
and by following the milestones in your Roadmap, as much as possible, if the
underlying assumptions are still valid or conversely quickly and timely
change course according to a new Roadmap/new assumptions/new
milestones (so to re-align to your Vision and Strategy) if the old assumptions
are invalidated. So agility is as much as implementing in practice the
direction and the path set to reach your goal(s) as much as it is a continuous
test of your assumptions to make sure that your milestones are still
significant. Agility is about achieving as much validated learning as possible
in the shorter possible time so to orient oneself, decide and act on it fast.

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Agility is all about shortening your OODA loops based on new validated
knowledge, in pursue of your Vision, in accordance with your Strategy and
by verifying your position on your Roadmap to see if it still makes sense to
follow it (or conversely to modify it according to the new “validate learning”
made available within the loop). (Richards, 2004)
Source: Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
How do you become more agile? By losing weight, by becoming “leaner”, i.e.
reducing mass so to minimize your inertia while also strengthening your
muscles and focusing on your core so to thrust forward faster and with more
momentum. While becoming “leaner” is about improving your processes
(that’s what “implementing agile” is mostly about), growing your muscles
and focusing on your core is all about your technology/architecture. You
need to “grow” the power of your technology by keeping it up-to-date and at
the highest level of efficiency to respond to the stress of your business while
you also need to “stretch” it to keep it flexible and fast to react. You do not
want it strong but stiff nor flexible but weak. In order to do that, you need to
invest in your Architecture Runway (“growing muscle power”) more than
you think and you need to choose the right technological partners that can
boost your agility if you haven’t done stretching off the soreness of a heavy
session of growing your technology yet. (Ries, 2011). At the same time,
focusing on your core means building a technological architecture that can
support your growth in a timely and scalable manner: fast to implement, low
maintenance, able to reach to and propel your efforts across multiple projects
with momentum and power. It also means that whatever else is not Core does
not need to be done “in house” or developed “in house”. A powerful Core
allows you to use multiple “techniques” and “weapons” made available by

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other providers for they represent their Core, hence they are highly optimized
and effective. This is the principle of a new type of innovation, Open
Innovation. Open Innovation is the way to support and increase your agility
and Open Innovation requires you to be able to select and work with the right
technological partner(s). Gone are the times when Innovation was an in-
house business only…
Innovation
Last but not least, Innovation, what is this Holy Grail that recently everybody
seems to pursue and very few large players seem to be able to achieve
consistently? Is Innovation a goal per se or is it simply a means to an end? Is it
a necessity or just a temporary fashion? Is Innovation a strategy per se or
does strategy always require to innovate? Is it driven by technology or does it
drive technology? Is Product Innovation the only Innovation or are there
different types of Innovation? Is Innovation the solution or is it the problem?
How does it relate to Vision, Strategy, Roadmap, Agility?
Innovation has been studied for many years by business leaders, academic
researchers, strategic advisors and entrepreneurs. Many (MANY) tomes,
articles, papers and blogs have been written about it to the point that it is
impossible (certainly for me, at least) to try and summarize and/or reconcile
into unity all the different contributions on this fascinating topic. I strongly
suggest all those who have an interest in this subject to read as much as
possible about it and at the end you find, in the Bibliography section, some of
the publications that I personally find particularly relevant for it and from
which I have derived the basic idea behind this article.
In its most generic conception, we can define Innovation as the process that
leads to the creation and delivery of new value to consumers and companies
(PwC, 2017). Besides being purposely vague and undetailed, this definition
allows us to remove ourselves from the specific content of Innovation (a
product, a feature, a new business model, a new distribution channel, a new
marketing campaign, etc.) and to focus on the necessary characteristics of that
content (whatever it is in its physical manifestation):
- It requires a creative effort I.e. it has to be something “new”, not
evident to everybody immediately by simply looking at its individual
constituents

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- It requires to be delivered i.e. it has to be actually usable by those who
want/need it
- It requires to be valuable for somebody, specifically our customers
(either individuals or companies)
This means that Innovation that stays in a lab and it’s never delivered to
customers is not innovation; it also means that innovation that gets delivered
to customers but it’s not valuable to them is not innovation. This last
statement is quite strong, if you think of it: if you produce something new,
out of a creative process and you manage to deliver it to your clients but they
do not find it valuable, then your “creation” and “delivery” efforts have been
wasted and you have not created Innovation for your customers hence for
your business. If you do not bring to “fruition” something “new” that is also
“valuable” for your customers, you are not innovating hence you will not be
rewarded for your innovative effort.
So , it seems clear that Innovation is at the core of any business who wants
to… stay in business, profitably, by constantly delivering tangible/usable
value to their customers, in the face of changing circumstances that requires
the constant creation of “new” forms of value.
It should also be clear that Innovation does NOT:
- apply to product or services only, nor
- there is only one type of innovation (technological innovation), nor
- require to be disruptive to generate value, nor
- is limited to one single time or one single phase of the life of a
company/business
Innovation is the never ending struggle of any commercial company (i.e. an
entity whose success and very existence depends on the ability to sell
products and/or services to their customers at a higher marginal price than
the marginal cost to produce them, after covering all fixed costs) to:
- create a competitive advantage in the market by permanently
differentiating your products/services from those of your competitors
so that customers prefer them (over those of your competitors) hence
pay a premium for them, and/or

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- neutralize (i.e. make it temporary, not permanent) a competitive
advantage of our competitors over us, and/or
- improve or keep constant the quality of the products/services
delivered while increasing productivity or reducing production costs
(Moore, 2008)
Conclusions:
In order to innovate, you need to know what creates value for your
customers, hence you need a Vision. Then you need a Strategy to know how
to implement that Vision in order to deliver the innovation based on it. While
you do that, you want to constantly check your Roadmap so to determine
whether your assumptions and the consequent milestones to deliver it are
still valid so to make sure that in the end you deliver real value to your
customers (who will be willingly to pay you a premium for it) at that very
moment (and not based on the marketing data/analytics that you had when
you started the process).
During this process, you need to keep observing and collecting “validated
learning”, orienting yourself based on your observation, using your validated
knowledge to make timely decisions (according to what you have observed
and how you orient yourself) and then finally acting on those decisions. In
one word, you need to stay “agile”.
And this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how it all pans out and comes to a final
cohesive conclusion, eventually. This is how Vision, Strategy, Roadmap and
Agility need to work together in order to propel Innovation out of the door,
in a timely fashion, for the right customers (i.e. for customers who perceive
value in what is delivered to them) so to assure a permanent success for your
business.
Final Comments:
I hope these findings above are worth the long and windy road to get there
although I need to remind you that it’s never about the destination, it’s about
the journey itself. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

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Bibliography:
Christensen, C. (2016). The innovator’s dilemma. Harvard Business Review Press.
Christensen, C. and Raynor, M. (n.d.). The innovator's solution.
Goodwin, T. (2018). Digital Darwinism : Survival of the Fittest in the Age of
Business Disruption. Kogan Page, Limited.
Keeley, L., Pikkel, R., Quinn, B. and Walters, H. (2013). Ten types of innovation.
Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
Moore, G. (2008). Dealing with Darwin. New York, NY: Portfolio.
PwC. 2017. Breakfast Innovation Seminar
Richards, C. (2004). Certain to Win. U.st.: Xlibris Corporation.
Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup. New York: Crown Business.