Culture Eats Your StrategyFor Breakfast

My name is Mark CohenI am here to share some of our learnings about using culture to drive tech innovation

You can find me at:

@markc

linkedin.com/in/markcohen

Hello!

We have a distributed tech team, with presence in:

◉ Sydney◉ Melbourne◉ Brisbane◉ Canberra◉ Perth

Tech Locations

Head office

~ 750Domain staff across Australia

~ 130Coders creating digital products

~160Tech staff

Digital is a little Different

We deploy to production once or twice an hour

Incoming Work Execution “Done”

Tech Principles

Incoming Work Execution “Done”

Tech Principles

“An engaged employee is 44% more productive than a satisfied worker, but an employee who feels inspired at work is

nearly 125% more productive than a satisfied one”

Why Employees At Apple And Google Are More Productive

Time, Talent, Energy

Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

Culture eatsyour strategyfor breakfast

~Peter Drucker

Our Tech PrinciplesThe ideals that dictate how we do what we do

Defining our tech principles was a team effort

Focus Streams Within Digital Tech:

Core Growth and Revenue Protection

20%

Audience / Revenue Growth

60%

Tech Enablers10%

Strategic Drivers10%

Priorities Scorecard

Lean Canvas / Business Canvas

https://leanstack.com/is-one-page-business-model

Incoming Work Execution “Done”

Tech Principles

In our digital product world we have no PMO

➔ Product Owners have OKRs / KPIs aligned to strategy

➔ They work within individual teams on prioritising, and maintain their own 90 day roadmaps.

➔ They then hold responsibility for delivery.

Keep it about the product not the process

Sprint ShowcasesThe ideals that dictate how we do what we do

Evolution of team orientation

“The Tech Team”

Discipline Oriented

Product / Component Oriented

Strategic Objective Oriented

Dependencies Slow Things down

Single cross- functional team

Component teams (territorial)

At 100% Workload Dependencies Kill

sprint sprint sprint sprint

Incoming Work Execution “Done”

Tech Principles

12 Month Reviews

◉ Tech Lead, Product Lead, Business Sponsor

◉ Once a quarter we review past items against success metrics

◉ 60 Second SMT Presentations

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face

~ Mike Tyson“

Cargo Cults“A cargo cult is a millenarian movement … which encompasses a range of practices and occurs in the wake of contact with more technologically advanced societies.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

Beware of Cargo Cults

Modern EquivalentIn our world, this manifests as expecting the same success after emulating the basic rituals of a more sophisticated culture, without understanding the “why”

https://xkcd.com/1503/

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face

~ Mike Tyson“

Any questions ?You can find me at

@markc

linkedin.com/in/markcohen

Thanks!