FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES

We’re passionate about helping entrepreneurs maximize value and impact. We are Horizon-3 focused and everything we do in our practice is informed by 5 FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES. In the interest of transparency, we’ll unpack all 5 so you know exactly what we believe and why:
. ALIGNED ON THE ENEMY
. ALIGNED THESIS (ie: emerging risks & opportunities)
. ALIGNED END-STATE (what success looks like)
. ALIGNED EXECUTION (ie: roadmap is on target for value-capture)
. AGILE THINKING (learn & course correct fast, without losing alignment)

HORIZON-3 FOCUSSED
rather than focus on the current & next wave of execution (Horizons 1 & 2), we focus on HORIZON-3... The Promised Land.  As we see it, it’s our job to help leaders hone their vision & strategy for the BIG IDEA, adjusting their thinking and ensuring stakeholder alignment along the way

The 3-Horizons are a useful way for leaders to manage the tension between the urgent need for immediate results (execution) and keeping everyone aligned on the promised land (particularly when the forces are shifting so quickly). 
In this short video, we share our version of the 3-HORIZON framework, optimized for leaders of disruptive change. We hope you find it helpful.

ALIGNMENT OBSESSED

1. ALIGNED ON THE ENEMEY
When it’s all said and done… when you have reached the ‘promised land’ and succeeded to your wildest dreams, what is it that you will have fixed? Said differently, what is that got you so fired up in the first place? (the problem or situation that is simply not OK as it stands today).

This is not not a trivial question. It’s at the center of why you’re doing all of this. More to the point, It’s at the center of your story… it’s the ‘purpose’ that will attract talent, investors and even customers to come on the journey and help you bring your vision to life.

It’s certainly a key consideration when we’re evaluating which teams to work with, because frankly, the world has some wicked problems and nothing attracts us more than helping people who are on a mission to solve a really compelling enemy.

2. ALIGNED THESIS
As we see it, anyone with a vision for a disruptive innovation must see something that others don’t see. Specifically, they believe something about how the forces of disruption and what risks and opportunities that opens up… based on that, they believe they have a compelling opportunity to make an impact (and capture value along the way). 

In our experience, it’s remarkably valuable to unpacking that underlying thinking, not just to stress-test hidden assumptions, but to hone the thinking and build alignment across the leadership team. Over a decade ago, we created unique process that helps entrepreneurs identify the exponential forces with the greatest potential to impact their success, and to develop an informed thesis on how those forces are most likely to unfold (this future view informs their vision, and in many cases, sparks fresh opportunities for innovation).  We call it FORCECASTING and we’ve now helped 200+ 200 companies around the world hone their thesis to maximize value.

Learn more about ‘thesis formation’ and the role it plays in creating and optimizing winning strategies HERE.

3. ALIGNED END-STATE (WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE)
It’s not enough to hone your thesis and strategy on your own... you need alignment across the organization, because alignment removes friction (and because, without alignment, it’s nest to impossible to attract the resources you need to execute). We approach this in two ways. For starters, we consciously help CEO’s and innovation leaders carve out a safe zone to hone their H3 thinking without causing friction with the execution team.  Then, at key points along the way, we design specific activities to engage key stakeholder layers and build alignment and momentum anchored in the WHY (the promised land), the HOW (key steppingstones) and the WHAT (execution activities).

4. ALIGNING EXECUTION
Once you’ve achieved product market fit and start to focus on growth, it suddenly becomes important to convince investors and talent to help you bring the vision to life. A compelling story is step-1, but you’ll also need to show evidence that both your milestones and your execution path are in-sync with your value capture story.

Our Execution1.2.3. practice is specifically designed to help teams embed execution alignment into the organizations culture & processes, but it all starts with a simple but remarkably effective tool that we call the BOARD :: BOARD (because it’s the ‘board’ that you will use for discussions with the ‘board’).

5. AGILE THINKING (and doing)
Successful innovators use agile development because it’s proven to accelerate progress between idea and market fit.  Agile strategy is similar but focusses on iterating vision and strategy to stay ahead of the change-curve (without slowing down execution).

In todays fast-changing world, you actually need both rapid execution iterations and rapid thinking iterations, but most people find it much harder to shift their thinking than to iterate on a product. The reason is that we humans are hard-wired to believe that if something is new / unfamiliar it is most likely ‘improbable’.  This isn’t an excuse to not keep up… in fact it makes it even more important to help leadership and key stakeholders get familiar with fast moving forces and disruptive ideas. 

Agile Thinking is built-in to many of the frameworks we’ve built, most obviously in the 4C’s and FORCEcasting.

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