Plans that can bend
Agile governance, funding and strategic control.
- Level
- Bitesize
- Learning time
- 1 hour 15 minutes
- Where
- Strategy and the future
- Price
- £39
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion
Overview and Outcomes.
Overview
Good control helps a plan learn rather than catching people out. Public boards need accountability, and they also need to know when a plan's assumptions have stopped holding. The first part compares project and team funding, explains Hope and Fraser's Beyond Budgeting and Handelsbanken's choice not to set sales targets, and covers outcome roadmaps, Goodhart's law and John Doerr's OKRs. The second draws on Robert Simons to separate post-action control from steering control, uses Nokia to show how accurate numbers can sit on failing beliefs, and offers three practical habits for building steering control into strategy.
What you'll develop
In this Bitesize, you will develop the ability to:
- Explain why an annual budget for uncertain work fixes scope too early, and compare project funding with funding stable teams and products.
- Distinguish steering control from post-action control and explain why post-action control alone feels reassuring.
- Distinguish the target, forecast and resource allocation jobs that Beyond Budgeting separates, and apply that insight to goal setting with OKRs and Goodhart's law in mind.
- Plan three steering control habits: naming assumptions, revisiting them on a fixed cadence, and giving a reviewer real authority.
- Plan board assurance that moves from checking the plan towards testing value, using outcome roadmaps and a quarterly review to continue, change or stop work.
- Explain how steering control closes the strategic management cycle by feeding failed assumptions back into scanning and formulation.
The Modules.
1 hour 15 minutes of learning.
- 09Governing, Funding and Planning Agile WorkGovernance is not the enemy of agile, but it must change so that accountability and learning pull the same way. This module compares project and team funding, explains Hope and Fraser's Beyond Budgeting and Handelsbanken's choice not to set sales targets, and draws on the National Audit Office on agile governance. It then covers outcome roadmaps, Goodhart's law and John Doerr's OKRs at Google, closing with guidance for public boards.40 min
- 07Strategic Control and Continuous AdaptationStrategic control is about closing the loop, not catching people out. Drawing on Robert Simons' work on control systems, this module distinguishes post-action control, which checks targets after the fact, from steering control, which tests whether the assumptions behind a strategy still hold. Nokia shows how accurate numbers can sit on failing beliefs, and three practical habits show how to build steering control in.37 min