Step 03 / FUNCTION
Reimagine the future of your function.
Step outside today’s demands and imagine the function your future customers will need. Use outside-in stimulus, personas and a future article to set the direction, then test the assumptions and build a roadmap you can act on and adapt.
What the work can look like
A function uses time released from routine work to explore tomorrow’s customer needs. It imagines a different service, tests the riskiest assumption and funds the first experiments through an owned roadmap. Capacity allocation follows the direction.
Inside FUNCTION: how the work unfolds
Inside FUNCTION
How the
work unfolds.
Look outside and ahead
Explore changing customer needs, other organisations and emerging possibilities. Protect time for curiosity and research beyond the day-to-day workload.
Imagine the future
Develop personas for customers today and tomorrow. Write an article from 2028 or 2030 describing what the function has become and the value it creates. Treat the vision as a direction to test.
Test the assumptions
Identify what must be true for that future to work. Use customer conversations, small experiments and evidence to decide what to continue, adapt or stop.
Make operating choices
Use the direction and workflow evidence to rethink roles, decisions, interfaces, technology and capacity. Leaders choose the balance of delivery today, exploration, growth, cost and risk.
Build and review the roadmap
Connect the vision to OKRs, a year ahead and the next 13 weeks. Name owners, measures and review dates. Complete items, remove what no longer matters and add work as evidence changes.
The intended outputs
What you take forward.
Operating model choices covering roles, decisions and capacity, with a team charter for how to lead the change.
A living roadmap with three to six initial experiments, owners, OKRs and an agreed rhythm for review and accountability.
Transcript intelligence
Bring the conversations into the evidence.
Use permissioned conversations to examine recurring assumptions, friction and leadership patterns. Check the context with people and connect the findings to the choices ahead.
Explore transcript intelligenceSix functions / One method
See the work, the method and the choices.
Explore the work today, practise the method, imagine tomorrow’s function and build a roadmap to test and deliver that future.
Reallocate capacity / 10·10·10·10
What would you do
with 40% of your capacity
to change the business?
First, aim to do five days’ work in four. Then redesign the work towards five days in three. If you release 40% of the original working capacity, give every part of it a purpose.
The 10/10/10/10 model makes that leadership choice explicit. Each allocation is 10 percentage points of the original capacity: together, the full 40% released.
Retention
Keep capability in the business. Reconsider automatic backfilling as roles and workloads change.
Insourcing
Use your own people and their knowledge to take on valuable work previously bought from outside.
Emerging risks
Give leaders capacity to understand and address the new risks AI creates across the business.
Cross-functional growth
Bring people together around customer needs. Test new propositions, routes to market and ways to create value.
Make each allocation accountable. Agree a baseline, an owner, an outcome measure and a £ hypothesis. Use the FUNCTION roadmap to review what changed and decide what to continue, adapt or stop.
Put the capacity to work with FUNCTIONA planning model, not a guaranteed saving. Measure the capacity actually released, including review and rework, and adapt the allocation to your business.
Read alongside the work / FUNCTION
Ideas to put into practice.
These are useful companions to the session. The practices carry forward as you apply them to real work.
Question whether today’s customers, incentives and measures reveal tomorrow’s opportunities.
More books for this session
Examine leadership, disciplined focus and how repeated choices build momentum.
Connect the future vision to an objective and measurable key results.
The next conversation
Build on what you learn.
The next step depends on the evidence and what the business needs.
Your next step
Discuss FUNCTION with Adam or Greg.
Bring the priority and the questions you need answered. Agree the scope and commitment before deciding.