Accelerated Innovation

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Identifying and Eliminating Sources of Strategic Friction

Description

This capability focuses on recognizing and resolving organizational, procedural, or strategic barriers that slow or block GenAI progress. It includes diagnosing misalignments, inefficiencies, and resistance that hinder effective strategy execution.

Why it's Important

Even with a strong GenAI strategy, execution often falters due to hidden sources of friction – unclear ownership, misaligned incentives, outdated processes, or competing priorities. These blockers slow decision-making, reduce adoption, and create inconsistent outcomes. Proactively identifying and removing friction enables faster execution, better collaboration, and more scalable success. The most advanced organizations treat friction elimination as an ongoing discipline – not a one-time fix.

Why it's Challenging @ Scale

  • Friction is often invisible: Many of the biggest blockers – like misaligned goals or unclear accountability – don’t show up in status reports.
  • Friction is cross-functional: Blockers rarely sit in one team or function, making them harder to identify and address.
  • Change often creates resistance: New GenAI initiatives can trigger fear, skepticism, or territorial behavior.
  • Root causes are rarely obvious: Symptoms may appear in one area, but the underlying friction often originates elsewhere.
  • Friction elimination requires persistence: Organizations often stop at identifying blockers but fail to follow through on resolution.

Complexity

High: While identifying friction is straightforward in theory, doing so in a way that drives real organizational change requires cross-functional collaboration, trust, and sustained focus.

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Taking Action

Though most organizations begin their GenAI journey with significant knowledge gaps, there are targeted actions that can be taken to accelerate the process. Select your group’s current maturity, based on your assessment results, and act today.

The most important part of any journey is starting… To move from “Exploring” to “Experimenting”, focus on the following key actions:
  • Explore Key Concepts & Best Practices: Complete the Defining Your Strategy to Win with GenAI workshop (2 hrs.) to understand foundational key concepts and explore applied best practices.
  • Assessing Organizational Readiness for GenAI.
  • Designing the GenAI Strategy Framework.
  • Aligning GenAI Strategy with Enterprise Objectives.
  • Sequencing Strategic GenAI Initiatives.
  • Defining KPIs for GenAI Strategy Execution.
  • Define Your Action Plan: Set a clear, prioritized action plan to strengthen Defining Your GenAI Strategy – combining the standard launch-pad actions with the targeted activities below. 

Jumpstarting Your Plan 

  • Define your accountable lead(s), their roles, responsibilities, and committed capacity 
  • Deliver your first 90-day quick wins 
  • Configure your Delta 7/28 Plan module 
  • Define your measures of success and insights plan 
  • Build and kick off your change and comms plan 

Targeted Activities 

  • Establish your strategic friction log and friction burn-down 
  • Establish your risks, issues, blockers system (RIBs) and weekly triage 
  • Publish your stakeholder alignment map and decision rights 
  • Deliver Quick Wins: Small, high-impact GenAI projects that can demonstrate tangible value in a short time frame.
  • Spotlight blockers early: Launch a friction log pilot to capture recurring issues across teams.
  • Run a friction-mapping workshop: Invite cross-functional leaders to surface high-impact friction points.
  • Create a fast-track issue resolution board: Establish a simple process to escalate and address GenAI blockers in real time.
To move from Experimentation to “Lifting-Off”, prioritize the following actions:
  • Complete one or more of our Deep Dive Courses: Begin exploring key concepts and best practices, including:
  • Nail It Before You Scale It: Assess and optimize your solution or process before adopting it at scale.
  • Assess Your Proposed Solution or Process: Test your friction identification methods across multiple teams to confirm repeatability.
  • Define in-scope Processes and Guardrails: Establish boundaries on which types of friction are prioritized and how resolution is governed.
  • Close any Data or Measurement Gaps: Ensure friction tracking data is reliable, current, and tied to measurable impact.
  • Define Your Adoption & Scaling Plan: Create a structured roadmap for how GenAI solutions will be rolled out across teams, workflows, or business units.
  • Define Your Phased Implementation Plan: Sequence your rollout of friction mitigation processes across high-priority areas.
  • Build Awareness and Finalize Enablers: Equip leaders and teams with the tools and context they need to identify and escalate blockers.
  • Operationalize Your Comms Plan: Build a consistent messaging rhythm around friction resolution wins and process updates.
To move from Lifting-Off to “Accelerating”, prioritize the following actions:
  • Formalize Your Best Practices: Document and standardize what’s working to ensure consistent, scalable success across teams and use cases.
  • Codify your friction logging process: Establish a repeatable template or tool to track and escalate blockers.
  • Create resolution playbooks: Build step-by-step guides for resolving common categories of friction.
  • Define ownership for friction elimination: Assign clear roles to ensure accountability and follow-through.
  • Accelerate Your Adoption: Intensify efforts to embed GenAI across your organization by expanding use cases, increasing user engagement, and removing adoption barriers.
  • Expand friction detection across domains: Extend friction-spotting practices to additional business units and functions.
  • Surface wins from friction removal: Publicize before-and-after impact stories to demonstrate value.
  • Train teams on proactive detection: Help employees recognize early signs of friction and act quickly.
  • Celebrate Your Wins: Publicly acknowledge team accomplishments to build and sustain adoption momentum.
  • Highlight blocker-to-breakthrough stories: Showcase specific examples of friction points that were resolved with clear results.
  • Recognize individual contributors: Call out team members who played key roles in identifying and eliminating friction.
  • Share impact metrics: Communicate time saved, productivity gained, or improved outcomes linked to friction removal.
The “Accelerating” stage represents “Target State” for many capabilities. “Breaking Away”, on the other hand, suggests that the specific Capability represents a clear competitive advantage for your business.
  • Streamline & Embed: Integrate GenAI into core workflows while eliminating friction points to make usage seamless and routine.
  • Automate friction detection: Use GenAI-powered tools to identify blockers based on workflow patterns or user behavior.
  • Integrate friction tracking into daily work: Embed escalation triggers into standard tools like project management platforms.
  • Remove repetitive blockers: Systematically address recurring issues to eliminate them from the root.
  • Leverage Automation: Use GenAI-powered tools and workflows to streamline repetitive tasks, enhance operational efficiency, and reduce manual effort.
  • Automate escalation workflows: Route flagged friction points to the right owners instantly.
  • Trigger resolution suggestions: Use GenAI to propose solutions based on blocker patterns.
  • Simplify approvals and routing: Reduce manual handoffs in friction-heavy processes.
  • Evolve & Further Accelerate: Continuously refine GenAI strategies based on insights and outcomes, while expanding into more complex or high-impact use cases.
  • Analyze root-cause trends: Use historical data to identify systemic friction drivers.
  • Refresh playbooks and templates: Keep friction resolution resources up-to-date with new lessons.
  • Expand to ecosystem blockers: Address friction points that span vendors, partners, or third-party tools.

Key "Watchouts"

As you take action you’ll want to avoid:

  • Treating friction as a one-time fix: Many organizations stop after identifying blockers but fail to institutionalize removal practices.
  • Focusing only on surface symptoms: Without root-cause analysis, the same blockers will resurface.
  • Assigning friction removal to the wrong owner: Accountability often lands with teams that lack authority to fix the issue.
  • Underestimating cultural resistance: Some blockers persist due to fear of change or unclear messaging.
  • Failing to measure impact: Without visible outcomes, it’s hard to sustain commitment to eliminating friction.

Targeted Benefits

While Identifying and Eliminating Sources of Strategic Friction can be challenging, its benefits are clear and compelling, including:

  • Faster GenAI execution: Removing blockers reduces delays and unlocks velocity across initiatives.
  • Higher adoption rates: Smoother workflows help teams integrate GenAI into daily operations.
  • Improved cross-functional alignment: Addressing friction surfaces misalignments and forces collaboration.
  • Better use of resources: Eliminating inefficiencies frees up capacity for higher-impact work.
  • Sustained momentum: Proactively resolving issues helps teams stay energized and focused.

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Eddie
Accelerated Innovation

Hi, I'm Eddie 👋

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