A Guide To Develop Strategies And Increase Team Effectiveness With Columinity

Based on the latest scientific research, Columinity (formerly Scrum Team Survey) is a pioneering tool to help teams improve where it matters most. It’s your evidence-based companion for continuous improvement. It highlights performance patterns on multiple levels and illuminates how to move forward.

We defined five steps to get the most out of Columinity:

1. Study the research
2. Explore the principles
3. Facilitate a kickoff
4. Inspect the results
5. Develop strategies

We strongly recommend all users to follow these steps. They prove to increase the chances of successful usage of the tool drastically. This article describes step #5: develop strategies to improve team effectiveness.

Organizations and their teams use Agile/Scrum because they hope it can help them become more effective. Think of delivering value to customers sooner by releasing early & often, decreasing cycle time and lead time, improving team morale, lowering the number of defects, optimizing return on investment, and increasing innovation rate.

Working effectively with Agile/Scrum requires strategy. Strategy is no more than a goal, followed by a series of actions necessary to achieve that goal and the players who need to be involved.

How will the team collaborate to achieve the Product- and Sprint Goals? How will they improve over time? What strategy guides the release of a product? How does management interact with the teams? How will the organization as a whole work and grow successfully with Agile? It’s all about strategy.

This article describes the concept of Strategy Knotworking. Strategy Knotworking is a coherent set of Liberating Structures that aims to involve and engage everyone in developing and evolving sustainable strategies. Frequently use Strategy Knotworking to help teams improve over time and to turn ambitions and ideas into reality.

Use the information from this article to design your own Strategy Knotworking workshop. The complexity and duration of the workshop is flexible. Make it a quick 1-hour session or a 2-day in-depth workshop. Whatever works best for you. It is beneficial to answer the questions thoroughly. A more extended workshop is a serious investment of time, but it’s worth the effort.

If you need support, always feel free to reach out.

How To Prepare

In the context of our tool, we recommend using Strategy Knotworking with the Agile/Scrum team(s), their supporters (managers, leaders, coaches), and stakeholders. This workshop works with small and large groups.

Material

• What material you need depends on how you decide to run Strategy Knotworking. We have noticed that the material from our product kit, “Unleash Scrum In Your Organization,” is considered valuable.
• A poster of the Strategy Knotworking worksheet is also recommended.

Knowledge

Strategy Knotwork is a coherent set of Liberating Structures. You don’t have to be a Liberating Structures expert, but some basic knowledge is recommended. A good starting point is to read the foundational articles on our Medium page and, ideally, join a Liberating Structures Immersion Workshop in your area. Check the Liberating Structures website, or message us for in-company opportunities.

About Strategy Knotworking

Strategy Knotworking is an approach for shared sense-making and strategizing. It helps groups of any size build the skills they need to adapt to sudden change. With Strategy Knotworking, everyone is involved in making sense of their environment, identifying the most pressing challenges, establishing the baseline starting position, developing promising ideas for dealing with their challenges, and defining the first steps for getting started.

Strategy Knotworking taps into everyone’s experience, intelligence, and creativity while continuously (re)answering six core questions:

1. Purpose: What is the fundamental purpose of our work?
2. Baseline: Where are we starting, honestly?
3. Context: What is happening around us that demands creative change?
4. Challenges: What critical uncertainties and paradoxical challenges must we face to make progress?
5. Ambition: Based on what we discovered, what is now made possible?
6. Action & Evaluation: What are our next steps, and how will we know we are making progress?

Strategy Knotworking transforms the whole process of strategy-making. It helps you to keep the complexity of challenges you face intact (not flattening or over-simplifying). It balances predictability and unpredictability of possible futures (not putting all your eggs in one basket or losing yourself in many possibilities). It widens the circle of participation in strategic planning (not relying solely on a small circle of experts or leaders).

Strategy Knotworking turns ideas and ambitions into reality by creating unique strategic narratives.

When To Use Strategy Knotworking?

In the past years, we’ve used Strategy Knotworking for various applications. For example, to kick off or reboot a team, develop product strategies, launch a company-wide change initiative, and support organizations to refine their strategy.

Despite its dramatic consequences, the pandemic is an excellent example of Strategy Knotworking’s value and strength. It required companies to adapt to the changing circumstances continuously. These changing factors often impact the broader organization. So, people from all different areas in the organization needed to be involved with sense-making and strategizing. Organizations require an approach that helps them shape the future while creatively adapting to the moment. This is where Strategy Knotworking comes into play.

Because explaining concepts like Strategy Knotworking quickly becomes abstract, we always like to give practical examples. In this article, we describe in detail how we used it for our own company to prepare ourselves for the pandemic (with all the limited knowledge we had at that time).

In the tool’s context, it makes sense to use Strategy Knotworking once the teams have used the survey for the first time. As such, you can use the team reports and their data to create strategies. Strategies based on facts, not assumptions and gut feelings.

How To Use Strategy Knotworking?

There’s no one approach to using Strategy Knotworking. You can explore the various parts of Strategy Knotworking in one hour, day, or week. It depends on how deep you want to dig into the questions, how many people you want to involve, and how much time you have available.

We recommend including people from different parts of your organization to explore the questions. This prevents thinking too narrowly and can result in surprising insights. Also, prepare yourself to revisit the outcome continuously. Inspect and adapt based on insights that emerge along the way.

You can use many different Liberating Structures to explore the questions. There’s no fixed connection; the possibilities are endless. To help you get started, we offer three examples of Liberating Structures for each question. We’ll explain them in more detail below.

Purpose — What is the fundamental purpose of our work?

Liberating Structures that might fit well to explore this question are:

• #1: ‘Nine Whys’. A purpose is the main reason for working together; it’s the inexhaustible reason for a group to exist. As such, it is fundamental for collaboration, yet it is usually opaque or forgotten. A clear purpose helps teams align toward a shared goal and, as a result, gives meaning to all the other steps of Strategy Knotworking.
• #2: ‘TRIZ’. Stop counterproductive activities and behaviors to make space for innovation. That’s the intention of TRIZ. Use it creatively to clarify the purpose by flipping the question: “What would be the most unclear, vague, or demotivating purpose statement of our work?”. Have a bit of a laugh, connect it to reality, and optionally, do a full Nine Whys afterward. As such, TRIZ can become a ‘seriously valuable energizer.’
• #3: ‘Drawing Together’. Use this structure to reveal insights and paths forward through nonverbal expression. Work together to visualize the ideal path forward by only using the five symbols of Drawing Together. Notice patterns & differences. See if you can turn the various illustrations into a purpose statement. It doesn’t have to be perfect; use it as inspiration. Again, if needed, follow up with a ‘Nine Whys’.

Baseline — Where are we starting, honestly?

Liberating Structures that might fit well to explore this question are:

• #1: ‘What, So What, Now What’. This structure is a great way to answer the question, ‘Where are we starting, honestly?’. First, focus on facts and observations. Next, make interpretations and draw conclusions. Finally, identify the next steps. This could be the next step as part of the Strategy Knotworking workshop or for the road ahead.
• #2: ‘Ecocycle Planning’. Ecocycle Planning aims to analyze the full portfolio of activities and relationships to identify obstacles and opportunities for progress. As such, it can also be used to clarify the baseline. For example, create transparency in your team activities, the state of the product you’re developing, or the progress of a significant change initiative within the organization.
• #3: ‘Discovery & Action Dialogue’. Finally, ‘DAD’ is another great structure to set the baseline. It helps groups invent local solutions to the problems they face. Rather than giving up or immediately reaching for “best practices” that worked elsewhere, it helps groups carefully analyze the problem, potential solution, and how everyone can contribute. It also builds helpful problem-solving skills in groups by giving them a useful structure to think about challenges.

Context — What is happening around us that demands change?

Liberating Structures that might fit well to explore this question are:

• #1: ‘UX Fishbowl’. Invite users, stakeholders, or simply our employees to explore what’s happening within and outside your organization that demands change. Fishbowls consist of an inside circle of people with direct experience with a challenge of interest to those in one or more outer circles. The inside circle shares experiences based on a common challenge while the outer circles listen. In alternating rounds, the outer circles generate questions they want to ask the inside circle. By focusing strongly on listening and asking questions about experiences, you can use UX Fishbowls to create an environment where people can learn together.
• #2: ‘Celebrity Interview’. This structure helps experts and leaders share their experiences and insights with a group in a profoundly more engaging and interactive way than regular presentations. As part of Strategy Knotworking, use it to invite, for example, the CEO to explain what they see happening around the organization that demands change. Or invite an expert from the field to share their observations.
• #3: ‘Conversation Cafe’. This structure encourages people to listen and understand each other’s perspectives on a profound, shared topic or challenge instead of trying to convince or persuade others to see it your way. Sitting in a circle with a simple set of agreements and a talking object, small groups engage in consecutive rounds of dialogue. Conversation Cafe invites people to listen to one another’s thoughts and reflect on a shared challenge. In the context of Strategy Knotworking, the question for this round (What is happening around us that demands change?) could be the starting point for Conversation Cafe.

Challenges — What critical uncertainties and paradoxical challenges must we face to make progress?

Liberating Structures that might fit well to explore this question are:

• #1: ‘Wicked Questions’. The purpose of Wicked Questions is not to find a single answer but to create transparency about seemingly paradoxical realities that exist side-by-side. By accepting both realities, you can engage in deeper strategic thinking and explore new possibilities. As such, it’s a perfect fit to explore this question of Strategy Knotworking.
• #2: ‘Critical Uncertainties’. Optionally, you can string Wicked Questions with Critical Uncertainties to develop strategies to respond to potential future challenges. It enables groups to quickly test the viability of current strategy and build their capacity to react quickly to future challenges. Using this structure creates more resilience: the capacity to actively shape the system and be prepared to respond to change.
• #3: ‘Panarchy’. Organizations are complex systems. They comprise many layers, components, and elements that interact unexpectedly and unpredictably. This interplay guides and shapes our behavior and what is possible. Systems Thinking offers a perspective on how we can influence complex systems. It invites us to look for patterns in the entire system and identify potential leverage points. Once we find the proper leverage points, even a small push can trigger a significant change. Include this structure in your Strategy Knotworking workshop to find these leverage points!

Ambition — Based on what we discovered, what is now made possible?

Liberating Structures that might fit well to explore this question are:

• #1: ‘25/10 Crowd Sourcing’. This structure allows you to rapidly generate and sift through a group’s boldest actionable ideas in less than 30 minutes. Not only is it an innovative way to identify bold, ‘out of the box' solutions, but it is also appreciated by participants for its highly active nature. Use it to quickly make visible what possibilities the participants see to face the challenges they discussed in the previous step.
• #2: ‘Min Specs’. Min Specs offers a nice balance between exploring the entire field of do’s and must not do’s and then aggressively narrowing down to what is essential. Optionally, you can connect Min Specs to 25/10 Crowd Sourcing. The result of 25/10 Crowd Sourcing is a top 10 idea (hence the ’10 part’ in the name). Use Min Specs to turn these ideas into a top 3 and refine these ideas into more actionable next steps.
• #3: ‘Integrated~Autonomy’. This exercise exists to help groups move from either/or- to both/and thinking. Most of the challenges we face in the real world don’t have an easy answer. Different solutions can be true or happen at the same time. This makes them Wicked Questions. If you used Wicked Questions as a previous exercise, it might also make sense to use Integrated~Autonomy to explore how to navigate your paradoxical challenge most effectively.

Action & Evaluation — What are our next steps, and how will we know we are making progress?

Liberating Structures that might fit well to explore this question are:

• #1: ‘Ecocycle Planning’. I’ve already recommended using Ecocycle Planning to explore the baseline of your team or organization. You can also use Ecocycle Planning to get into motion based on where you currently find yourself. How can we move our ideas from ‘Gestation’ to ‘Birth’? How can we remove activities from the ‘Poverty’- and ‘Rigidity Trap’? What would ‘Creative Destruction’ look like?
• #2: ‘What I Need From You’. To move items to the next phase within your Ecocycle, you probably need help from others. WINFY is ideally suited to express these essential needs clearly. Clearly expressing what we need from others to succeed isn’t something we’re very good at. It’s easy to get stuck in vague requests like “We need to communicate openly” or “I need your support.” It’s no wonder that the response to these needs is often equally vague, like “I will do my best” or “We’ll see.” Use this structure to remove all vagueness and get total clarity on who will do what AND what ideas won’t be turned into reality.
• #3: ‘15% Solutions’. A 15% Solution is any first step or solution that you can do without approval or resources from others, which is entirely within your discretion. In short, it is something that you can start right now if you want to. Use this structure during this step of the workshop to identify the next steps. To be clear, you can use 15% Solutions continuously during the workshop; you don’t have to wait until the end. I’m a fan of using 15% Solutions many times in rapid 10-minute rounds. This ensures ideas aren’t lost, and a list of next steps is growing continuously instead of only being defined at the end of the workshop.

Learn more

If you’re interested in learning more about Strategy Knotworking, check:

• An in-depth series on Strategy Knotworking by Keith McCandless
• Paper: Liberating Strategy — by Keith McCandless and Johannes Schartau
• Blog post: Strategy Knotworking — Turning Ideas And Ambitions Into Reality

Hopefully, this guide triggered enthusiasm and interest in using Strategy Knotworking to develop strategies and increase team effectiveness with Columinity. If you’ve got any questions and need support to facilitate this workshop, always feel free to reach out!

Closing words: what’s keeping you?

From experience, we know how hard it can be to drive continuous improvement in your team. There are often a thousand things to improve, but what will be most impactful? We are building Columinity to make this easier for you and your team. It’s free for individual teams. So give it a try and expand from there!