All of the elements of a high performance organization depend upon disciplined innovation says Kirk Botula, Founding CEO, CMMI – global leader in the benchmarking and elevation of organizational performance.

It had been an enriching experience to speak with Kirk on interesting topics of high-performance organisations.

Q1. How do you like to get introduced to the uninitiated?
Kirk: I am Kirk Botula, I was the founding CEO of the CMMI Institute. I am a serial entrepreneur with expertise in the commercialization of technology and  growing and scaling high performance organizations.

Q2. We all talk about continuous improvement and delivering quality. How do we know if we are improving?
Kirk: The only way to know if you are improving is through measurement. They key is to make sure your measures are relevant. 

Q3. What is the key difference between Maturity Levels and Capability Levels, when we speak about Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)?
Kirk: In simple terms we think of maturity as applying to the whole organization as an organic system and capability levels as a functional thread within that system. 

Q4. Briefly explain the characteristics of high-performance organisations.
Kirk: There are a few characteristics of a high performance organization. First, it’s products and services are generally clearly differentiated in the marketplace and have a high degree of fit with customer needs. Generally a good indicator of this is a high Net Promoter Score. Secondly, the organization will deliver with a high degree of capital efficiency generally exhibited by better margins than their peers. Third, they will have high degrees of employee engagement and trust and can attract better talent and pay better. Fourth, they will operate transparently in a fact-based manner. Lastly, their key operating cycle times whether it is product or service development are faster than their peers. This means, for example, that for every two major releases a competitor does, the high performance organization can do three. Consequently, they are able to put their competitors in a reactive position. Another analogy would be playing a game of chess where one player is allowed to make two moves for every move their opponent makes. I think another good analogy of a high performance organization is a professional sports team. Individuals master their own skills and work to measure and improve their individual performance. Goals are clear. Everyone knows the playbook. Coaching supports the team. You keep score and win.

Q5. What are the three major threats of changing global landscape to the growing businesses?
Kirk: Technology is always a potential source of disruption to businesses. Regional barriers to entry still exist, but it is easier today for small companies to operate globally very rapidly. I tend to think of these kinds of threats more as opportunities. The high performance organization can accelerate innovation and always be working to disrupt itself thereby setting the pace for the whole market.

Q6. According to you, what is the significance of stable processes, governance and organisational structure to become an Agile organisation?
Kirk: All of the elements of a high performance organization depend upon disciplined innovation. If you do not have stable, measured processes, you have no basis upon which to know whether you are getting better or worse. The agile movement is really just the application of risk-based experimentation and validation to a company’s product lifecycle. I think this is most obvious in the Lean Startup movement where product management has become increasingly focused on the design of experiments to validate product market fit. 

The problem that “agile” organizations run into is that scrum deployed by itself to a single work unit is simply a local optimum. People are confused by the feeling that they are spinning their wheels and getting nowhere. As Eli Goldratt taught in the Lean movement, you have to optimize the throughput of the whole systems which means that agile teams have to work cross-functionally.

Q7. Share a tip to gauge organisational capability?
Kirk: The best way to initially gauge organizational capability is the lightweight CMMI evaluation appraisal that allows a trained individual to do a high level gap analysis of the organization. It is a great starting point for anyone’s journey to high performance.

Q8. A message for our readers to reduce the risk of a failed system.
Kirk: Design programs to drive out risk in order of likelihood and severity. For example, if the greatest risk to your next product is that no one will buy it, you should be trying to find customers to commit to it before bothering to spend anything on development. If the greatest risk is technical, you should prototype in order to drive out the technical risk.