MASTERING COMPANY INITIATIVES

Initiatives in the context of Howwe are critical areas of activity that act as an enabler for the organization’s Most Important Goals, i.e. what a company, a function or a team needs to focus on in order to succeed in its Most Important Goal. They can in some organizations also called focus areas, must-win battles or pillars.

The key to success with initiatives is often to have a clear picture of the purpose and objectives of the initiative, but also who will be responsible for an initiative and which teams are expected to contribute.

The initiative views in Howwe are a tool for the stakeholders or teams who own and are responsible for initiatives to understand how things are going, i.e. which teams are contributing and how they are contributing, if they have a plan and if they are executing the plan on time. However, it is in the teams themselves and more specifically in the contributing teams’ sprints that the actual work is carried out. Teams expected to contribute to initiatives create Key Activities in their regular sprints and tag them with the appropriate initiative tag. The Acceleration meeting is then used in the teams to discuss status and create progress.

Owning the initiative means being responsible for progress being made within the initiative and for it to be completed on time. You need to think through the following and make a clear plan before you create the initiative in Howwe:

• What is the purpose of the initiative, what do you want to achieve? What are its objectives? And within what time frame? It can sometimes be a difficult task to concretize purpose and objectives, but it is time well-invested as it creates clarity among the teams that are expected to contribute!
• Which teams are expected to contribute to the initiative and the sub-initiatives you have identified? 
• Are there clear sub-initiatives that are then owned and run by other teams? Sub-initiatives can be a good way to create an even clearer structure and plan.

When the above is clarified and key stakeholders are in agreement on purpose, objectives, structure and responsibility, it is time to firstly create the initiative in Howwe and then to communicate to teams what is expected of them:

Explain and anchor the purpose and objectives of the initiative in relevant teams, describe how you see that these teams can contribute to progress within the initiative.

Then give the teams a deadline to create their first plan.

• When do you want the plan to be ready? For example in 2 weeks.
• How far into the future do you expect teams to have a plan? For example: at least one quarter

Teams that are expected to contribute to the initiative now create the Key Activities in their regular Howwe sprint that are required to make progress on the initiative, and tag these with the correct initiative tag.

Milestones are a way to identify the Key Activities that are more critical than others to achieve in order to progress the initiative. A good way to work is to start with Milestones and in a second step break these down into smaller Key Activities that need to be carried out. 

Very important is that the teams or stakeholders who own and drive the initiative then critically review the plans teams have made. Are they of good quality and and well thought out enough for initiatives to be carried out as intended? Provide feedback to the teams.

Very often, initiatives are cross-functional in nature. Then the team that owns and drives the initiative needs to keep the contributing teams together and help them create a realistic plan, identify cross-functional dependencies, and collaborate. A good way to do this is to book meetings with key people, monthly or quarterly, where cross-functional dependencies can be discussed and sorted out.

In this chapter we go through how to create initiatives in Howwe, which buttons to click and how to adjust already created initiatives. In other chapters, this course is about the way of working around initiatives, i.e. how to drive and own initiatives in an organization. A strong recommendation is to first go through the entire course before creating a new initiative in Howwe.

Leaders create and adjust initiatives, while employees can only see the dashboard. 

Note that Initiative control first needs to be activated in your account. Contact Howwe Support via the chat bubble in the lower right corner or email help@howwe.io to activate Initiative.

Watch the video for a step by step guide.

In short, you can say that teams contribute to an initiative by tagging relevant Key Activities in their team sprint with the right initiatives tag, and then completing these Key Activities on time. The team’s Acceleration Meeting is used to keep track of progress and create momentum in completing the activities on time.

But let’s take a step back and review what the day-to-day work of teams contributing to initiatives might look like.

The management team, a business area or a team that owns an initiative reaches out to the teams that are expected to contribute and communicates the purpose and expectation to these teams. We recommend that the team is given an initial deadline to create their first plan, and how far into the future this plan should extend, for example a quarter.

Now the team enters the sprint in their regular team: here the Key Activities that contribute to the initiative are created and tagged with the correct initiatives tag. The correct tag is only visible when a team has joined the initiative.

A good way of working is to now first start with so-called Milestones. Milestones are a way to identify the critical Key Activities to achieve in order to make progress within an initiative (or any plan). For the owner of the initiative, such as the management team, it is a way to more easily understand the plan that the team has created, without having to go through and understand all the details. For the team, it is a way to first figure out what major steps there are and then in a second step create a more detailed plan.

Team usually also have a lot of other Key Activities in their sprints, i.e. the team also carries out Key Activities that help them make progress towards their team Most Important Goals, as well as contributing to one or more initiatives. Often Key Activities are both: they contribute to initiatives but also help the team achieve its Most Important Goals.

During the Acceleration Meeting, progress is made by talking about status and making commitments to work further with Key Activities.

Successfully owning and being responsible for an initiative is a lot about being proactive and constantly ensuring that there is a good plan ahead. Curiosity is required, i.e. that you periodically check the initiative views in Howwe:

• How is the initiative going as a whole?
• Which teams are behind in the Key Activities that contribute to the initiative?
• Which teams lack a plan going forward?
• Are the existing plans good/ambitious enough?
• What cross-functional dependencies exist that need to be resolved?

Therefore, it is extremely important to constantly convey to contributing teams what is expected of them:

• Teams are expected to create a plan for the next quarter or half year by date X, e.g. “in two weeks, at the latest, I want to see that you have planned the next quarter”
• Teams are expected to complete the Key Activities identified as critical to progress within the initiative

Therefore, show curiosity and contact teams that have delayed Key Activities or no plan ahead. Advise the teams to make good use of milestones as a way to show the important points of their plan.

How often you think you need to follow up on initiatives depends on the team, company and initiative. Consider what is reasonable in your particular case: every two weeks, or maybe just once a month? Book blocks of time for yourself in your calendar where you go through the initiative in Howwe.

In addition to that, you probably need to book meetings with key people in the initiative you are responsible for. Consider in which constellation and with what frequency they are needed. It can be 1on1 meetings with leaders who contribute to initiatives or it can be cross-functional meetings where risks and dependencies are discussed and sorted out. Book these meetings for the whole year and they will be in the calendar.

Also watch this video for a guide on how to use the Initiative views in Howwe in the best way for your analysis.