Forces of the pace layering confusionthe same dayI had a super-insightful conversation this week with a colleague about approaches…A motor and a rudder

The nature of the challenge2021While working on a strategy this week, I realized that one of…Having done a bit of work on researching and sketching out strategies this week, I realized that there are some commonalities in their theories of change, a few patterns that I start seeing.

Change2022So far, I carefully avoided the topic of change, presenting my problem-solving…The first pattern is what I want to call a “motor.” Every effective theory of change seems to have a means for sustaining the process of change. When drawing out boxes and arrows in such theories, eventually a motor pops out as a cycle of causal relationships: if we do more of this, more of that will happen, which will allow us to do more of this, etc. It can be something that involves network effects (aka flywheel), or it can be something as simple as “if we deliver <blah>, we get funded to deliver more <blah>.” In either case, there’s something that serves as a source of energy, allowing us to keep going. There doesn’t have to be just one. Just like in any reliable ship, several motors are useful for redundancy. Conversely, if our theory of change is just linear sequences of steps, chances are that it’s not a very durable one.

It’s a unicycle!2021Thinking a bit more about correlated compounding loops, I would like to…The OODA Loop2021One of the lenses for which I tend to reach frequently is…The second pattern is a “rudder.” Now that we’ve powered the tiny ship of our theory of change with a motor, we need a way to steer it. A rudder manifests as causal arrows that interact with the object of change. They also look like a cycle, but here, they will look more like an OODA loop: ship something, get feedback, adjust, ship something again, etc.

Build a thing to build the thing2023Every week, we wrote up a report of what we learned. Where…Rudders are critical to a sound theory of change. Change rarely happens in one big splash, and our ideas about the effects of the change tend to seem naive and silly when they make contact with reality. For example, back in the Web Platform days, I kept trying to build more rudders: from Origin Trials to Web Confluence to Lighthouse.

The ghost of unclear theory of change2021The unclear theory of change often haunts conversations about strategy — especially…Steady winds, doldrums, and hurricanes2023It just so happened that this year, many of my friends and…Sitting with discomfortthe same dayWhile processing a difficult conversation with a colleague, we found this insight.…Organizational mindsets are developmentallinks here, 2021Each stage is a place to acquire capabilities that will take us…Growth, control, and tricycleslinks here, 2021Riffing on Alex Komoroske’s excellent set of cards on compounding loops, there’s…Cutting or highlighting?links here, 2021As it often happens in larger organizations, we tend to live in…Organizational cartographylinks here, 2022For the purpose of this story, by “organizational structure” I mean a…Next time when you’re in a strategic thinking mood, consider your theory of change, be that the one of your organization, your team, or your own. What are its motors? What are its rudders? How do you power and steer the ship of your destiny?