Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is challenge the question we’re asking.
Explore five questions about how organisations work, how value flows, and what might be getting in the way. Each one stands on its own. Start wherever your attention lands.
- Where does work actually wait? Better questions by Rich Allen
Improving individual productivity does not necessarily improve the overall flow of value.
- Are your teams organised around value or dependencies? Better questions by Rich Allen
Team boundaries often reflect historical structures, reporting relationships or technology rather than how user needs are met.
- What happens when AI makes the wrong work faster? Better questions by Rich Allen
AI may accelerate individual activities without improving end-to-end delivery, potentially increasing pressure on downstream constraints.
- Could you explain why every team exists? Better questions by Rich Allen
Teams are often described in terms of the systems they operate or the activities they perform, rather than the user needs they help meet.
- What evidence would justify changing your teams? Better questions by Rich Allen
Organisational changes should be treated as hypotheses informed by evidence, rather than automatically adopting a fashionable target structure.
Rich Allen
Rich Allen is a UK-based sociotechnical architecture consultant. He helps organisations improve the flow of value through people, teams, technology and organisational structure.
He is the author of User Needs Mapping: Aligning Teams Around What Matters, a long-standing Team Topologies Valued Practitioner and the creator of the Fast Flow Toolkit.
He works with engineering and product leaders to make the flow of work visible and to change team boundaries on evidence. Flow Awareness Sessions are a low-commitment place to start.
He has worked with teams at Thales, Blue Lagoon, LHV Bank, PureGym and Syngenta Digital.
Have a question worth exploring together?
Sometimes an outside perspective helps make a difficult organisational problem clearer. If one of these questions resonates, I’d be happy to explore it with you.