Respond to all organizational drivers you are responsible for, in order of priority, by fulfilling the requirements you determine necessary in each case.

Table of Contents

An organizational driver is a situation where the organization’s members have a motive to respond because they anticipate that doing so is beneficial or necessary for fulfilling the organization’s purpose. (by helping generate value, eliminate waste, or avoid undesirable risks or consequences).

In the course of daily operations, every organization needs to deal with numerous existing and new drivers. Whenever a role keeper or a team becomes aware of a new driver they are responsible for addressing, taking a structured and considered approach supports staying focused on priorities, deciding and acting appropriately, and making the best use of resources, energy, and time.

This pattern lays out a series of steps to follow that help you focus only on relevant situations, address them according to priority, consciously determine what to do, act intentionally, and reviewand iterate if necessary, to ensure each organizational driver is addressed adequately.

While this approach sounds straightforward, acting in such a methodical and intentional way can be challenging. When faced with new situations, it’s common to jump straight into action based on unverified assumptions about what’s happening or required and act according to first impulse, habit, or according to how we dealt with things in the past. Such behaviors are more likely under pressure, but also occur simply because we misinterpret a situation, overlook the wider context, or fail to pause long enough to consciously consider what might actually be required. This can lead to various negative consequences for the organization, such as:

  • Responding to irrelevant or low-priority situations: Time and energy are wasted on issues that don’t matter or don’t align with broader goals.
  • Postponing or interrupting work on more important matters: Focus is diverted from what actually needs attention, or too many issues are dealt with at once.
  • Jumping to action without clarifying scope and direction: Intervening without considering what is a meaningful and appropriate result.
  • Designing ineffective or misaligned interventions: Actions fail to address the actual requirement or conflict with other efforts.
  • Overlooking opportunities to learn and adapt: Interventions are left unreviewed and unchanged, even when they are ineffective, leaving the situation they were meant to address unresolved.

This pattern supports individuals and groups to focus on what matters, consciously determine what’s needed, and develop coherent, intentional interventions suited to the situation, while still being flexible enough to react when new things come up that take priority. A structured, intentional approach helps ensure the best use of time and resources.

These are the recommended steps to take to ensure that all situations that come to your attention in the course of your daily work are adequately addressed:

  1. Confirm that the situation is relevant for the organization to address and that responding is your responsibility or that of your team.
  2. Determine its priority: if it’s not an immediate priority, ensure it is added to the appropriate place in the backlog before responding. When it’s time to respond:
  3. Determine the requirement.
  4. Determine intervention (if necessary).
  5. Act accordingly.
  6. Regularly review outcomes and adapt your approach if necessary, based on what you learn.

Role keepers and teams will have to figure out how to integrate these steps into their daily work processes to ensure they deliver value incrementally.

Following these steps ensures that:

  • Action is grounded in a shared understanding of relevance and responsibility.
  • Responses are deliberate, clear, and adaptive.
  • Resources are used effectively to create value and avoid waste.
  • Learning is integrated as part of the process.

This process translates the concepts for purposeful action into practical steps to navigate everyday work, so you can act with greater coherence and impact. The first three steps relate to clarifying purpose, the next two to determining and implementing interventions, and the final step covers evaluation of both purpose and intervention.

If you are not familiar with the concepts of purpose, driver, requirement, and intervention, it’s recommended to pause here and check them out.

Step 1: Confirm Relevance

Before responding to a situation, it is essential to verify that it is relevant for the organization to respond to (i.e., it qualifies as an organizational driver) and that it is your responsibility to handle it.

To determine relevance for the organization, ask:

Would responding to this situation help the organization generate value, eliminate waste, or avoid undesirable consequences?

  • If the answer is yes, you’ve identified an organizational driver that requires attention.
  • If not, you can disregard it.
  • If you are uncertain, investigate further or ask for help.

If you personally perceive a situation that seems relevant, take whatever steps are necessary to confirm the fact for yourself. However, if someone else brings a situation to your attention, don’t assume it’s relevant just because they think so — verify it for yourself.

Once you confirm the relevance of the driver, determine whether you or your team is responsible for addressing it or if it falls under someone else’s responsibility.

  • If it’s outside your scope of responsibility, pass it on to the appropriate person or team (see Navigate via Tension).
  • If you are unsure who is responsible, consult with others, including the person who initially identified the situation.

Note: Sometimes, even though an organizational driver is not your explicit responsibility, you might still be best placed to deal with it, given the circumstances. In this case, ensure that your action will be beneficial and cause no impediments, exposure to risks, or harm.

To keep track of new situations that might qualify as organizational drivers, set up a dedicated space for storing information about them. For instance, for each domain, create a dedicated column on a Kanban board labeled “inbox” or “incoming,” where information can be stored until relevance is confirmed.

Step 2: Determine Priority

Once you’ve established that an organizational driver is relevant for you to respond to, the next step is to identify its priority relative to other matters you already need to deal with. Place it in the appropriate backlog and position it according to its priority, so that it can be managed and addressed effectively.

Even if responding to a situation is relevant and within your area of responsibility, it may not be an immediate priority. Other organizational drivers may need to be addressed first.

To maintain focus and work effectively, attend to high-priority drivers before lower-priority tasks to ensure that organizational energy is directed toward what matters most, rather than merely reacting to each new situation as it comes up.

Remember to review priorities frequently to account for changing circumstances and requirements.

Step 3: Determine the Requirement

After establishing that a situation is both relevant to respond to and a priority, it’s helpful to determine the requirement before deciding on the specifics of an intervention (in the next step).

A requirement is a state considered valuable to establish or maintain in order to address a specific driver.

In some cases, you may be familiar with this kind of driver and how to deal with it, or you have an idea in mind. There may even be an existing policy that clarifies a suitable requirement. In such cases, proceed to the next step and decide how to fulfill the requirement. Or, if you also know how to fulfill that requirement, go to Step 5 (Act Accordingly) instead.

However, for new drivers where the requirement is unclear, for example, when there’s no policy in place that offers guidance, the situation is complicated or complex, or there are many possible options, you will need to determine a suitable requirement:

  • The intended outcome(s) you’d like to achieve to address the driver.
  • The condition(s) you think should be established to achieve those outcomes.

See Determine Requirements for more information and examples.

Note: In complex situations, you may not be able to identify a requirement that fully addresses the driver. In such cases, determine one or more requirements whose fulfillment would represent suitable next steps.

Step 4: Determine the Intervention

Once the requirement is clear, a suitable intervention can be determined to fulfill the requirement. However, if it’s already obvious how to fulfill the requirement, or if an existing policy clarifies what to do, you can proceed to the next step (Act Accordingly).

An intervention is the specific steps you take and/or the constraints you put in place to fulfill a purpose.

Examples of interventions:

  • Activities (operations)
  • (Re)Prioritizing daily work (operations)
  • Creating or adjusting policies (governance)

For situations where co-creating an intervention with others is valuable or necessary, consider using one or more of the S3 patterns for decision-making, such as:

If there is uncertainty about how to proceed — especially in novel, high-stakes, or complex situations — consider taking an iterative and incremental approach. Taking things one step at a time supports continuous learning about whether your assumptions about the situation and its relevance, and the requirements and interventions you determine, are actually suitable. This way, you can update your understanding promptly, recognizing as soon as possible what’s working, what needs changing, or deciding next, and when to pivot or persevere.

When planning an intervention, consider defining one or more metrics to help you track progress and assess effectiveness over time. Metrics act as early signals that indicate whether you’re on track or if you need to adjust your approach. See Define and Monitor Metrics for support in identifying clear and meaningful metrics.

Record enough detail about the intervention, including any relevant rationale, to support both the implementation and evaluation.

Step 5: Act Accordingly

Once the intervention is clear, it’s time to implement it: act according to what you have determined in the previous step.

Take care to follow through on what you agreed to, and stay alert to new information that might reveal the need to make adjustments.

For any significant interventions, consider recording what you actually do, along with the actual outcomes, including those you didn’t expect. This information will be valuable for reviewing and, if necessary, improving the intervention later.

Step 6: Review and Improve

Finally, regularly review the outcomes of your actions to assess what’s working and use any insights to identify opportunities for improvement, both regarding the decisions you made and how you execute them.

Reviewing operational tasks involves assessing the actual outcomes and checking if the driver has been adequately addressed, considering the requirement and any defined acceptance criteria. Before scheduling any rework, first check if the purpose is still relevant.

The process for evaluating policies typically benefits from a more structured and detailed approach. For guidance, see Evaluate and Evolve Policies.