The RACI matrix almost got it right but still harbors too much ambiguity. In your team’s formal planning, govern only what is worth documenting outside email, and nothing else. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

In innovation, most attention is the work within the project. Before your next project begins, consider what questions your team should answer. This documentation provides transparency, alignment, and sets you up for success.

A script is a simple, raw, unambiguous format to get the sequence of actions on paper, primed for a Future State Process Flow.

Visual representation of the customer journey or employee experience - sequence of actions, primary path, and peripheral paths.

Although your innovation team is not literally a theater company, you should manage it like one because you want all the same things: a great environment, a great story for your customers, a great experience for your actors, auditions for the right roles, a sense of belonging, low re-invention of the wheel, and the integration of numerous moving parts. Memories, Moments That Matter, and a Standing Ovation.

Verb Sprawl is a real problem that slows teams down. In planning your team’s work, instead of governing meetings or emails, govern what is worth documenting outside email. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

In a fast-moving world, you need a simple framework for weekly reflection. Your colleagues don’t have to finish and share every sentence every week, but everyone must be thoughtful of these every week. Own your praise. Own your critique. Own your silence.

Which of your culture traits can you trace to impacting your waste? Consider whiplash, noise, inauthenticity, idle work, idle worker, Reply All’s, Backlog, last-minute cancellations, too many cooks, unused talent, and mismatched collaboration and competition. Fix your culture. Fix your Waste.

Which of your culture traits can you trace to impacting your quality? Consider purpose, defects, favoritism, loyalty, fairness, fear, franticness, task conflict, personality conflict, career security, job security, optimizing globally, optimizing locally. Fix your culture. Fix your Quality.

Which of your culture traits can you trace to impacting your speed? Consider trust, ambiguity, interruptions, fatigue, burnout, bottlenecks, egos, hero mentality, simplicity, complexity, silos, bureaucracy, meeting gridlock, and email overload. Fix your culture. Fix your Speed.

Use Five Verbs to pace, synchronize, and assign building your project’s Asset Portfolio.

The lifecycle and journey of the human-centered experience.