Good people with purpose want to be effective and efficient. The largest outcome for the smallest effort. Yet there isn’t a universal process that guarantees this.
In ‘Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking’, Jeff Gothelf recognised, “At the end of the day, your customers don’t care whether you practice Agile, Lean, or Design Thinking. They care about great products and services that solve meaningful problems for them in effective ways. The more you can focus your teams on satisfying customer needs, collaborating to create compelling experiences, and incentivizing them to continuously improve, it won’t matter which methodology they employ. Their process will simply be better.”
In ‘Principles over Process’, Marty Cagan continued, “My sense is that more people in our industry are starting recognizing this issue, and maybe we can get people back to what’s important – the principles – rather than the rituals.”
Good principles like…
Trust over control
Like Ansarada’s people, coached with values, plays, and pathways. Enabling career growth and empowering autonomous teams increased retention and performance.
Clarity over confusion
Like Ansarada’s way of working articulated on Confluence. Capturing, sharing, and refining knowledge changed the organisation from product-centric feature teams to collaborative, cross-functional, customer-centric platform teams.
Customers over competitors
Like Seer’s customers analysed on Strategyzer’s Value Proposition Canvas. Understanding customers’ jobs, gains, and pains, revealed unmet needs—unserved by competitors. Six add-ons satisfied those needs and increased average revenue per customer.
Focus over frenzy
Like Seer’s product strategy explained with Richard Rumelt’s kernel framework. A diagnosis defined critical challenges, policies guided the approach, and actions coordinated the steps.
Change over certainty
Like Macquarie’s website redesigned in the open. Collaboratively iterating from research, to insights, ideas, prototypes, and a globally executed website.
Evidence over ego
Like APIA’s quote funnel experiment. The A/B test challenged the popular assumption that faster quotes convert better. Slowing the customer journey down with persuasive content increased purchases by 17%.
Outcomes over outputs
Like Seer’s implemented metrics for awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue. Defining events, setting targets, measuring progress, and communicating progress shifted the company from delivery to results.
Good principles framed to solve good problems.
