An important part of any digital transformation is the change from traditional IT and business departments into multi-disciplinary product teams.  This change unlocks improved speed-to-market and better customer and commercial outcomes.

However…this is not an easy change for big organisations to make.

One of the fundamental tenets of how Veriteer drives business change is keeping a laser focus on target outcomes. This is surprisingly challenging in big, complex, change programmes, with teams often feeling more comfortable focusing on activities, outputs, or timelines.

However, that’s not exactly what this article is about. A more interesting, and often ignored, topic is how to define good target outcomes in the first place.

There is a lot of content out there that defines and compares different objectives frameworks (e.g. OKRs, balanced scorecards, OMTM), but there is less discussion about the magic required to make sure that these frameworks are populated with good outcomes.

There are many ways to define the concept known as ‘product’. One of the simplest (and therefore one of our favourites), is that a product is an offering that delivers user value, or facilitates the delivery of value. This definition clearly establishes product as far more than just technology and positions a product as something that can act to deliver an outcome.

However, like most definitions of product, it’s a little bit fuzzy.

It is a regrettable fact that most large organisations experience turf wars between different teams. This is especially true for new, or rapidly growing, departments.

There are many reasons for this issue: structural, cultural, behavioural. But based on our experience of working with some of the world’s biggest brands, one of the most common reasons is how brands connect strategy and operations.

Good strategy is about making the right decisions at the right time. Sometimes that means being really explicit up front and narrowing the option space to drive towards a very specific future. Other times, it’s about leaving large parts of the option space open and enabling agility in the pursuit of a clear goal.

At Veriteer, we have a tendency towards the latter approach. Only set the critical elements of strategy in stone and leave as much wriggle room as possible for enroute innovation.  As a result, principles feature heavily in our strategies.