WIV MAP Culture: The Competitive Edge Mindset v2 (work in progress)

Introduction

Many organisations fall short of their potential by neglecting key principles that drive competitiveness: fast iterations, waste elimination, value amplification, and a culture built on mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Despite widespread recognition of these ideas, most companies stick with a command-and-control approach where leaders dictate rather than foster two-way communication.

Ask yourself:

• Are you and your colleagues motivated and enthusiastic?
• Are you and your company’s current practices truly reflect these core principles?

I propose the WIV MAP Culture. A simple mnemonic for a powerful mindset and actionable principles to improve competitiveness, decision-making, and communication.

WIV MAP Culture stands for:

• Waste Elimination
• Iterating with Fast Validated Feedback
• Value Amplification
• Mastery
• Autonomy
• Purpose

Based on insights from Lean, Agile, Daniel Pink’s Drive, L. David Marquet’s Turn This Ship Around and Intent-Based Leadership, Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup, and James Clear’s Atomic Habits, this mindset distills many ideas into a simplified approach. It lets you focus on the most important principles without having to memorise countless facts or require everyone to read endless books and articles.

Core Principles

WIV: Lean and Agile Foundations

These three principles form the core of the framework, creating a continuous loop of improvement:

• Waste Elimination: Identify and remove non-value-adding activities.
• Iterating with Fast Validated Feedback: Develop products and services through continuous, feedback-driven iterations.
• Value Amplification: Focus on increasing the value delivered to customers.

A key insight: the more quickly you learn from feedback, the less waste you incur and the more value you can create. For instance, consider a side hustle selling t-shirts. Rapid design cycles and early feedback could lead to significant improvements in sales and customer understanding. In effect, early feedback can be as valuable as years of trial and error.

Additional takeaways include:

• Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup emphasises that people often underestimate the value of feedback as a critical source of knowledge.
• The tendency to stick with familiar methods, often encapsulated in the phrase “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM,” reflects a culture of blame and risk aversion.
• Embracing risk can be a competitive edge, driving innovation and efficiency.

MAP: Empowering Individuals and Teams

The MAP components Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose are essential for intrinsic motivation and high performance. Daniel Pink’s Drive distinguishes between:

• Extrinsic Motivation: “if-then” rewards and punishments that drive routine tasks but may hinder creativity.
• Intrinsic Motivation: The inner drive to achieve mastery, exercise autonomy, and contribute to a meaningful purpose. These factors are critical for engaging in complex, creative tasks.

By emphasizing intrinsic motivators, organisations can foster a culture where employees are truly invested in their work.

Culture as the Driving Force

As Atomic Habits by James Clear illustrates, lasting change comes from building strong habits.

Here’s an example of a robust organizational culture:

• Encouraging Healthy Habits: Drives continuous improvement and high performance.
• Fostering a Positive Environment: Ensures employees feel valued and heard.
• Supporting Sustainable Growth: Adapting to market changes while adhering to lean and agile principles.

Effective communication is the backbone of this culture. It ensures that every iteration is informed by feedback, every process is scrutinised for waste, and every employee is empowered through mastery, autonomy, and purpose.

Favour culture, over goal setting

Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting

Advocates of goal setting have had a substantial impact on research, management education, and management practice. In this article, we argue that the beneficial effects of goal setting have been overstated and that systematic harm caused by goal setting has been largely ignored. We identify specific side effects associated with goal setting, including a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a rise in unethical behavior, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation

Small Changes, Big Impact

Tiny, consistent habits compound over time into significant personal and organizational growth. Consider the “Four Laws of Behavior Change”:

1. Make it Obvious: Design your environment to trigger good habits.
2. Make it Attractive: Pair habits with enjoyable activities.
3. Make it Easy: Minimise friction to start and maintain new behaviors.
4. Make it Satisfying: Use rewards and positive feedback to reinforce habits.

Communication at the Core

Effective communication isn’t just a soft skill, it’s the engine that drives every aspect of WIV MAP Culture. When organisations move away from command-and-control and truly listen, they unlock opportunities for innovation and continuous improvement, they open the door to:

• Intent-Based Leadership: Leaders state their intent and facilitate teams to decide how best to achieve it, fostering mastery and autonomy while speeding up decision-making. This uses a culture of trust and respect.
• Collaborative Feedback: Open channels for sharing insights and concerns ensure that every iteration is aligned with customer needs and internal goals.
• Collective Waste Elimination: Team discussions help uncover inefficiencies and drive process improvements.
• Value Amplification Together: Engaging with customers and stakeholders creates a deeper understanding of what delivers true value.
• Nurturing Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose: Regular communication promotes skill development and reinforces the shared mission, breaking down silos and empowering growth.

Why Simplify Agile and Lean?

Agile and lean methodologies often seem overwhelming, there are many implementations such as Scrum, SAFe Scrum, Toyota Production System (TPS), Lean Six Sigma etc.. By distilling them into the WIV MAP principles, organisations can:

• Facilitate Actionable Decisions: Clear guidelines help teams incorporate lean and agile practices into daily routines.
• Promote Consistency: A common vocabulary aligns everyone around shared objectives.
• Enhance Accessibility: A streamlined approach makes these principles approachable for all levels, from the C-suite to frontline teams.

One view is that the 4 core values of Agile (below) are foundational, supported by an additional 12 guiding principles:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

However, you can argue that Scrum represents a rigid, corporate-friendly implementation of Agile that strays from its original intent. SAFe Scrum, designed for large-scale implementations, future dilutes the core principles of Agile.

Challenges in Current Practices

Despite the buzz around agile and lean, many organisations struggle due to:

• Superficial Adoption: Buzzwords replace deep understanding.
• Lack of Understanding: Team members may know the terms without knowing how to apply them.
• Poor Implementation: Inadequate training and resistance to change lead to half-hearted efforts.
• Cultural Misalignment: Existing norms and power structures may clash with lean and agile values.

Much like knowing the benefits of exercise without following through, neglecting these principles can result in stagnation, low morale, and missed market opportunities.

Real-World Insights

Allen Holub captures the essence of agile succinctly:

Agile:

• Work small
• Talk to each other
• Make people’s lives better

For more insights, see Allen Holub’s tweet and explore his heuristics. The focus remains on meaningful communication and delivering genuine value amid the noise of agile jargon.

Conclusion

Embracing WIV MAP Culture Waste Elimination, Iterating with Fast Feedback, Value Amplification, Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose provides a clear path to agility, innovation, and sustainable growth. By elevating communication through intent-based leadership and transparent feedback loops, organisations ensure that every voice is heard and every iteration drives improvement.

Begin building a culture that:

• Minimises waste
• Iterates quickly with validated feedback
• Maximises value
• Empowers teams through mastery, autonomy, and purpose.

A special thank you to Unsplash for the cover image.