episode-5

Why are we running
anyway?

Realigning the coaches with the objectives

Imagine yourself running after a car and not knowing why. Now if you are four-legged and reading this journal, you might find this completely normal. But for our regular readers, this can be a pretty odd affair.

The newly-appointed coaches at RED, were somewhat in a similar situation while working on the ExO workshop, before being shown the way. This is an account of how they aligned with REDs goals and objectives. The journal carries forward the format from the previous write-ups of answering the obvious questions you might have while reading this.

How and Where did it all start?

The answer to this question lies in some questions the coaches had when they sat together for the first time to plan the sprints:

How and Where did it all start

The doormen at self-help groups never attend a door in their life.

The retreat at the Gnostic Centre had everyone super excited—come on, where else do designers and researchers get a chance to be part of such a transformation? But somewhere things didn’t add up. There were a lot of gaps between the plan and its execution, and the coaches realised they needed help.

So who helped them?

You may refer to him as the Head Coach. This person was also the one to organise the Gnostic Centre retreat. Here's what he helped the coaches understand.

Also, RED was chosen to spearhead the fulfilment of these objectives.

But why only RED?

But why only RED?

The basic existence of RED lies in innovation and experimentation. It was supposed to have all the resources to cause and lead a massive transformation.

And what would RED do to
achieve the twin objectives?

To achieve revenue:

  • RED would have to kill all its unprofitable ventures, experiment with new initiatives and opportunities that help achieve the revenue target X, and generate revenues using existing services to ensure stability.
  • Build systems and processes that are growth-centric. E.g. cut down on the expenditures caused by bureaucratic and orthodox practices.

To make BluOne and its ecosystem an ExO:

  • Expedite the process of turning other divisions into ExOs by applying design-thinking and using technology to automate human-intensive services.
  • Implement ExO attributes (Internal and External) as discussed at the Gnostic Centre (Ep 1)

As discussed in previous reads, these attributes were to be first initiated at RED, and then to the rest of the divisions in the ecosystem.

Objectively speaking, every opinion is subjective.

What would ensure that RED achieves its objectives?

What happened next?

Now that the coaches had a clear sense of all that was going to happen—the new processes, the ExO workshop, and everything in the workbook started to make sense. And it was time for them to start a 4-week process of preparing for the ExO workshop.

No matter how big you become, chaos is never healthy, ask the dinosaurs.