Blood, Sweat and Roadmaps - Feb

Red vs Blue Roadmaps: The Tax of False Predictability

There are two kinds of roadmaps:

Roadmaps that make your job easier

Roadmaps that make your job more difficult

Most companies have roadmaps that make your job more difficult. Red ‘Bloody’ Roadmaps are the dominant form for roadmapping and in the age of AI this will be completely inadequate.

Your roadmap exposes your organizational flaws. The more bloody red your roadmap becomes, the more sharks and internal obstacles are present in your organization that can make delivering the roadmap nearly impossible.

We’re not ready for the age of AI. If you have a Red Roadmap, there is no point in upskilling your workers with AI because your current experts are already bottlenecked without AI.

The alternative is to transform your Red Roadmap into a Blue Roadmap. That won't be easy, as it will mean fixing your organizational obstacles, but it’s the only way you will ever reap the benefits of all the expertise you currently have.

Transcript

1. Blood, Sweat,& Roadmaps Maarten Dalmijn Blue Vs. Red Roadmaps: Why most organizations are completely unprepared for the age of AI.
2. Are We Ready For the Age of AI?
3. Waiting For the Meteor to Strike Our organizations are like dinosaurs completely unprepared for the age of AI... And it has NOTHING to do with AI expertise.
4. DRIVE Is This Enough? Autonomy Mastery Purpose Our desire to be self-directed The urge to make progress and learn The desire to do something with meaning
5. Disaster Struck
6. Decided to rebuild their product New app must be finished before Ace headphones Managers yelled at developers when they said the app wasn’t ready Teams were organized around silos Ship it no matter the quality SONOS Plus: go public, restructure team to silos, launch more products, and get rid of QAs
7. Agency Collective Competence Alignment Our ability to influence actions to produce desired results The competence we have together as a team Our ability to move along a shared trajectory Teams knew the release would be a total disaster but nobody listened Collectively completely incompetent despite having highly competent individuals Competing interests and no shared trajectory except ship the damn thing COLLABORATIVE OWNERSHIP
8. Agency: Who’s Ever Been In This Situation “If they don’t let me do my job, why am I even here?” -Francis Ford Coppola, The Offer
9. Project Aristotle (2012) The best teams at google don’t have the best people but high levels of trust and psychological safety
10. Agency Requires Trust If you want Agency, you must give people more trust than they deserve based on their level of competence
11. Agency Also Requires Competence
12. Low Trust Sucks Low trust hurts Competence Which in turn reduces Agency
13. Agency > Autonomy As AI increases competence, teams need more trust Trust grows competence and competence grows trust → High Agency
14. Most Great Products Are Built By Small Teams with Trust and Psychological Safety Around 25 people Around 30 people Around 300 people
15. COMPETENCE LOW HIGH LOW HIGH TRUST Sink or Swim Agency Drag of Distrust Limited Agency (Holding Hands)
16. COMPETENCE LOW HIGH LOW HIGH TRUST Ride the Slipstream of Trust and Competence Sink or Swim Agency Drag of Distrust Limited Agency (Holding Hands)
17. Leaders don’t trust their teams We create rules, processes and hierarchy to prevent having to trust our teams Brittle Teams struggle to make decisions and deliver The Cycle of Distrust When you don’t trust your people you will develop an organization where you can’t trust your people. Distrust fuels distrust
18. Collective Competence: Flight Crew A. RESTED flight crew Have not flown together before → Make less mistakes and perform better as individuals B. FATIGUED flight crew Flew three shifts together before doing the test → Make more mistakes and perform worse as individuals Group interaction and flight crew performance, Foushee 1988
19. Collective Competence > Individual Competence
20. Collective Competence > Individual Competence 1.A collective sense of events occuring in the workplace 2.Developing and using a collective knowledge base 3.Developing a sense of interdependency Individual competence is necessary, but not sufficient.
21. LOW HIGH LOW HIGH COLLECTIVE COMPETENCE The Mighty Ducks The Avengers Pinky and the Brain Minions
22. Hatched eggs used to populate the next cage Top-performing egg-laying hen: take 9 eggs Selecting For Individual Competence
23. Selecting For Individual Competence
24. My Best Holiday Ever Felt like an alien visiting another planet under water
25. 20 Years Later... 20 Years Later...
26. Brush your leg against coral? Wear sunscreen with oxybenzone? Water temperature too high? Water more acidic due to increased CO2 in atmosphere? Coral: Indicator Species DEAD!
27. What’s the Indicator Species of an Organization? Roadmap
28. Most Roadmaps Are a Bloody Battleground
29. Departments Departments Business Tech Strategy Execution Organization Hopes and Dreams Planning and Capacity Blood, Sweat and Roadmaps: Where Conflicts Surface Coor- dination Collab- oration
30. Roadmap Conflicts Not Even Exhaustive Who can give more examples?
31. Penguin Principle “Roadmaps reveal your organizational problems.”
32. High WIP Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item 5 teams working on 16 things at the same time
33. Roadmap Item A Roadmap Item B Roadmap Item C Roadmap Item A Roadmap Item B Roadmap Item C Example: Ineffective Team Structure 5 Teams 8 Teams 4 Teams Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy 1 Team 2 Teams 1 Team Coordination Hell
34. Example: Poor Leadership Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Roadmap Item Everything relates to the Vision or Strategy Nothing on the roadmap relates to the Vision or Strategy
35. Skip Maturity Models Examine the roadmap to discover what problems are present in an organization
36. RED vs BLUE Roadmaps RED ‘Logistic’ Roadmaps BLUE ‘Emergent’ Roadmaps Inside-out Roadmaps that expose our internal organizational struggles. Optimized for overcoming internal obstacles and predictability. Characteristics: Push Operationally taxing Slow decisions Solutions Coordination Cannibalization & Unproductive Conflict Front-loading decisions: plans resistant to changes and lots of politics Outside-in Roadmaps that expose our struggles with solving real-world problems. Optimized for overcoming real-world obstacles and adaptability. Characteristics: Pull Strategically taxing Fast decisions Problems Collaboration Creative Conflict Front-loading constraints: humble and emergent plans inviting possibility and curiosity
37. “The more we try to prevent sucking at predicting, the more we will guarantee to suck at adapting.”
38. Agency Collective Competence Alignment COLLABORATIVE OWNERSHIP Agency, Collective Competence and Alignment Are Crucial Trust Competence Intent Psychological Safety (Enabling) Constraints Shared mental models NOT OKRS Factors you can influence:
39. To Succeed With AI, Companies Must Become More Human 1.High trust and psychological safety are necessary for competence and agency. 2.We must optimize for collective competence. 3.Your roadmap reveals your organizational problems. The redder your roadmap, the more you’re not ready for the age of AI.