Melissa Perri

dictionary defines strategy as “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” This definition seems to be the common interpreta-tion of good strategy across businesses.

Strategy is a deployable decision-making framework, enabling action to achieve desired outcomes, constrained by current capabilities, coherently aligned to the existing context.

Think of the major pieces of work you do that are actually bets. Henrik Kniberg, a former consultant at Spotify, explains that this is how Spotify thinks.1 The company operates using something called DIBBs, which stands for Data, Insights, Beliefs, and Bets. The first three things, data, insight, and beliefs, inform a piece of work called a bet. The concept of thinking of initiatives as bets is powerful because it sets up a different type of expectation.

Figure 12-2. “The Four Steps to the Improvement Kata” from Toyota Kata Practice Guide, by Mike Rother (reprinted by permission of Mike Rother)

After we have set the goal, we begin walking through the Product Kata. We ask ourselves the following:
1. What is the goal?
2. Where are we now in relation to that goal?
3. What is the biggest problem or obstacle standing in the way of me reaching that goal?
4. How do I try to solve that problem?
5. What do I expect to happen (hypothesis)?
6. What actually happened, and what did we learn?

HEART metrics measure happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success.