Remove blockers to value delivery

Unpacking the VASE framework

This blog is part of a series about an organizational effectiveness framework I created. In this article, I explore how one framework element operates. Read the Framework Explainer if you’re new to this topic.

As a reminder, here is the framework for reference:

I’m playing with different ways to illustrate the framework. In this blog, I’m sharing my hand sketched version of the diagram. What do you think?

A little backstory

When I started working around the BCDevExchange, which birthed the Exchange Lab, they were hyper focused on value.

People (who happened also to be public servants) were frustrated that services were not getting delivered well, or at all, and were not meeting people’s needs. “Do better” was the driver.

The trouble was that they weren’t the only ones struggling to do better. Long story short, there were a number of good practices that fellow public servants were blocked from. The move was to get unblocked.

Some people assume that a quirky group of trouble makers just got together and started working differently because they wanted to. That they got to live in a little rules-free bubble and life was great for them, while everyone else had to struggle.

Absolutely. Not. The. Case.

The difference between those who couldn’t shift and those who could was that the Exchange Lab team focused on removing the barriers to delivering value in two key ways:

1. Remove silos and waste (waiting): build small, cross-functional teams and give them access to tools that produce results and learning quickly.
2. Remove the distance between people delivering and people experiencing the service.

All kinds of status quo got in the way. It took grit, sweat, tears and a few dance parties to get through it.

The result was a cohort of a few dozen examples of teams and organizations that had learned how to behave differently and work around the barriers to delivering value.

While the Lab team was also focused on changing policy, spreading knowledge, and getting enterprise access to talent and tools for everyone… there wasn’t really much stopping other programs from addressing blockers in small ways too.

In fact, there were other teams in government outside the Lab that were. And we were all cheering each other on, and taking time to share experiences too. We still do.

It might be as simple as recognizing when you are stuck and not being content to continue with the same thinking and practices that got you there. However, this really isn’t as simple as it sounds.

It does get easier when there is a frame to help.

Example observations

If value is not getting out the door, there is a good chance that something to do with “practices” and “service” orientation getting in the way.

Here are sample lists of blockers I’ve seen in organizations:

PRACTICES:

• The person responsible for deciding and giving direction on what value to deliver is distracted (or not 100% dedicated).
• No one is paying attention to how people are working together.
• Lots of big, long, meetings where people lose focus or are effectively wasting time because it is not relevant to them.
• People don’t know how to get started.
• The target is always in discussion: people don’t trust direction and the subsequent process of learning from incremental delivery (i.e. safe to fail).
• People don’t open up or reflect on their results to optimize learning.
• Tools: too many, not enough access, or lack of integration or flow.
• No visual management or content is inaccessible (50+ page documents, poor file management).
• People spend a lot of time reorganizing their process, tools, and practices because they don’t have a “lighting rod” of insight about user experience to propel them forward naturally to get delivering value.

SERVICE ORIENTATION:

• Senior leaders spend all their time in meetings about value delivery talking about solutions (which never get articulated enough to be tested, or ground truth-ed to even be valid).
• There is no map of the service representing the full suite of activities that would enable a measure of cycle time or to observe bottlenecks or opportunities for improvement.
• No one has observed a person using the service (surveys do not count.)
• Big backlogs of requirements are meticulously crafted to form a release twice a year, which is too much change for anyone to practically provide feedback on.
• The values that are intended to drive an organization’s work are not aligned to what people are experiencing or need.
• There are external forces or feedback loops diminishing outcomes and no one is tasked with inspecting them and providing insight to support the organization to adapt (e.g. foresight).
• People spend a lot of time reorganizing and re-messaging user research and other insights because they don’t have an effective team with enabling practices and tools in place to get delivering value.

At the bottom of these two lists I’ve cheekily referenced the magic in the framework. Having both the practices and service orientation in place unlocks value. When we are missing one, we see antipatterns like the two I added in bold.

Note that I haven’t named systemic blockers that also get in the way (like, it was against policy to hire a developer when we started.) These are all blockers that any organization — people working together towards a goal that delivers value — could choose to address.

Like our experience creating space for learning in the Lab, this framework creates the space to observe potential blockers, but does not prescribe solutions. Each organization or team will have a different context to navigate.

The hard part is seeing the opportunity.

While I do love receiving phone calls to help people with this, there are too many wobbly organizations with gnarly service challenges to address.

I’d like to see VASE become a framework that helps people practice exploring these kinds of blockers or frictions with their colleagues and partners.

I want to give people just enough of a hint toward questions they might ask. Ideally, this surfaces options for getting better in their context.

Put another way, the framework should constrain the cognitive load just enough to offer focal points for discussion. It should serve as a structure that liberates people from distraction and also creates space for exploration and learning.

Further, there may be experiences to learn from in addressing common blockers if we have a legible practice for observing them. I believe VASE can support that practice. I can give us shape and consistency for inspecting a complex yet patterned ecosystem.

I’m still playing with how to offer this framework. To do this, I am looking for opportunities to more rigorously develop and test the methods for applying it.

My team have started using it more directly now, which is great for me and hopefully useful for them! So far it has enabled them to tell stories about the partners they are working with in a consistent way, and to plan our next quarter’s worth of work.

It’s highlighted for me also how I can support my team. There are plenty of questions and tactics that emerge for me because I have tested experience. I’m better able to think about what I can transfer to them with this framework in use.

I’ve also had some helpful nudges recently from folks who see an opportunity to have this emerging body of work published in an academic paper. I’m working on figuring that out, and welcome any tips!

💐 Heather-Lynn

P.S. I decided to take a more direct approach to writing about this element than I did with my blog about Alignment. I chose real examples over analogies here. I wonder which worked better for you?

An earlier iteration of the framework with different language and a little more colour :)