Innovating strategic management and business design through Interweaving

The idea of capability has become a frequent talking point. However …

…the definitions of the idea of capability range from being equal to the concept of process to be loosely defined as a collection of resources or a component aimed at realising some outcome or purpose. Capability is an old general concept and there are uncountable kinds of capabilities, but only a few kinds interest people in analysis, design, or evaluation work. The proliferation of definitions and usages show few signs of slowing down. The differences in perception and use in and across peoples work may hamper the utility of using the concept of capability in an organisation.

If you wonder …

- if the capability or capability kind a just a Word, made out of Lead, or a newly discovered elementary particle located just beside Gold in the Periodic table?

- if the capability map is a Word Cloud or something relevant and useful to people and their Work-to-be-done?

… then Capability Test provides a way for practitioners to evaluate the value of capabilities. It is a neutral test, which can be applied to an actual capability, kind of capability, or a map of capabilities. It is neutral since it does not favor any particular kind or definition of capability.

The series is for you that use capability based methods, and not for method or framework builders.

An important question for any method or artifact is, how do you define success? This is especially important in this case where knowledge about the capability secret is likely to change the perception of what a capability is and what a capability can and should be used for.

If you get some time over you should, from time to time, stop and reflect on the material  / artifacts you use in your work. Reflection is especially valuable on material / artifacts that experts, consultants and other service providers provide you with.

Here is a simple quiz to guide your reflection:

Something interesting happened when I shared the capability secret with colleagues, professionals, and researchers. A “yes…, but …” dialog appeared. 

This kind of dialog and reactions, can important for you to be aware of when something new and simple is introduced and discussed. Especially if you use ideas and methods provided by others, such as experts and consultants.

The series is for you that use capability models, and not for method or framework builders.

 … is the title of a series of articles that expose a secret behind capability based analysis, capability system thinking and capability management.

The series is for you that use capability models, and not for method or framework builders.

It is a secret that can, and often do, make thinking about capabilities go wrong and frameworks to deliver poor decision making material.

It is a secret that turns attention and efforts away from real business and organisational topics.

The secret is easy to spot and easy to understand. It is an insight based on practical work and research. Although confirmation bias and sunk costs may prevent the insight to take effect.

In the previous Meaningful … article about Business Capabilities I covered 2 meaningful topics.

Meaningful ... Business Capabilities

• You need to know what “Innovation” is before discussing am “Innovation Management Capability”
• The result part of a capability depends on a number of source factors.

In this article I bring to the surface the question of what kind of capability you really want to include in a capability model or map?

Do yo want to be capable of ..

What is more meaningful to you and in work you do, with others across boundaries? A seemingly simple question. A question that deserves some thoughts.

In this short article I focus on the tool of Business Capabilities. A new idea served hot to executives and management by consultants and analysts.

Let us examine two meaningful questions:

It was with great interest that I opened the Open Group’s guide for Business Capabilities. This business architecture addendum is a welcome addition to their (information) technology oriented Enterprise Architecture framework - TOGAF. TOGAF is a well known, respected, and widely used framework with quite many practitioners. 

Half-way through the guide something started to bother me. Something felt very familiar. Then I realised that the guide follows the tradition of framework presentations. A framework is explained first, then the benefits of using the it, are assumed to be obvious and clear.

This article is aimed at people interested in getting some ideas on how to enrich capability based analysis and modelling based on frameworks such as TOGAF.