After spending a very successful week with leaders with a fast growing multinational company, using the simple and powerful Agile Canvas, I had the dangerous pleasure of another dessert rich conversation with close friend and serial entrepreneur Doug Craver. He tends to see whole worlds that go unseen by others.
Reflecting on his and countless other successful entrepreneurship stories, he argues that the way entrepreneurs narrate their stories is more about rewriting history. As much as they might boast of having had strategies and plans, they actually didn't. They iterated and collaborated their way into successful ventures, one good question at a time, and sometimes dozens of good questions at a time. They moved again and again into higher levels of thriving through the power of good questions.
It was a timely conversation, given the current next book writing launch on the topic of good questions. It inspires the possibility of once again simplifying the Canvas to a two-step dance: questions and sprints.
In this iteration of this amazingly effective model, we would generate questions by identifying our knowns, intentions, assumptions, unknowns and concerns. We would generate our sprint actions by identifying what we need to decide, communicate, draft, build, test and launch.
This continues to make the model adaptable to any kind of decision, collaboration and planning conversation and effort from the very strategic to tactical. It continues to allow the model to include any scale of focus and participation.
The unique power of this iteration is that it positions inquiry based action as the central focus and driver of success. Good questions make us infinitely more connected, creative, proactive and adaptive than ever. The same process promise is made: With the Agile Canvas, we will always do the right things at the right time. It doesn't get any better than that.