How can you know if your business is operating to its full potential in the environment you're in? This question can be difficult to take at face value. There are a lot of moving parts involved in assessing how this question can be answered, and it can be easy to give an indirect, generalized answer that doesn't represent your business or its activities much at all (we've built a simple free self-assessment tool you can try here).

To properly answer this question, Simon Wardley developed a four-phase framework for analyzing your business's maturity as a part of his Wardley Mapping technique. We use this framework to consult on projects and augment teams in the most accurate and effective way. If you can identify your business's activities matching with one of these four phases, then you've got clear actions to take in order to advance to the next one.

Phase 1: Stop destructive behavior.

The first phase of this maturity assessment focuses on making sure you aren't actively hindering your growth.

To start, you'll want to make sure your teams are effectively communicating. To start, using a common language, or a shared basis of understanding, is absolutely necessary to get everyone on the same page. Past that, understand that any assumption can be challenged, and everyone should be free to speak up or ask questions. This leads you to greater situational awareness, which should be a priority. Better awareness gives you the higher performance you're after.

Your activities on the development also need to be considered to get to this phase. This starts with a thorough understanding of all your different kinds of users. Identify them, and then break down their needs. Different groups of users' needs might compete with each other, so figure out how to work with each. You'll want to get to a point where meeting their needs also meets your own. To do this most efficiently, as low a level of duplication as possible is needed. This means your organization has to be fine-tuned for efficiency, so nothing goes to waste, and communication between departments is essential for this. Top these development activities off by using the right methods, and you don't need to just use one. There is a world of workflows out there; do the right research and pick the right one for each project.

At this phase, it's key to put enough emphasis on learning. Ensure your planning is based on data and past experience, and consider every action you take as a learning experience, to further inform better planning in the future. Finally, keep your operations on the small side at first. Study the details of your projects closely, and use small, but effective teams to accomplish them.

Phase 2: Become more context-aware.

After stopping any behavior that harms your organization, the next phase involves increasing your context awareness. You perform better when your decision-making is directly influenced by your direct surroundings, rather than by a set of arbitrary guidelines, or other business's unrelated past successes. Start focusing on activities that give you this understanding of your projects' contexts.

Again, it all starts with further improvement on communication. At this phase, complete transparency and openness is the goal to strive for. Foster an environment of unrestricted collaboration. You don't have anything to gain by letting some parties out on your planning activities.

In development, remember to keep a priority on outcomes. Tailor the project's activities and contracts around the end goal. Further towards this end, focus on using what you have available first before trying to custom-build a solution. This custom build might be trying to accomplish something that's already achievable, so be pragmatic about what you're doing and why you might be doing it. Plan out your development activities using a variety of strategic tools, such as financial models or mapping methods, to make sure your actions are efficiently viable. A good guideline to keep in mind is FIRE: Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant. Keep your work within a reasonable scale, as well as within existing agreed-upon standards. Thinking outside the box is good, but try to keep what you're doing within recognized standards, unless there's very clear evidence that the standard in question is obsolete and you should forge towards creating a new one.

At this stage, you'll generally want to move as fast as possible. The previously mentioned FIRE guidelines are most effective if you're working at a brisk pace. Start now, and refine along the way rather than spending too long forming a "perfect" strategy. Work on it as you go, because conditions in your environment can change at a moment's notice.

As you get your operations underway, you'll eventually have to deal with some setbacks. Take the appropriate measures to understand your risk as well as deal with it. Don't build anything too big without planning for some sort of failure. At the same time, prepare to experience some sort of inertia some time after getting started. It's inevitable, so have a plan for this as well as for failure, and be ready to deal with it when it happens. It's important that you stay efficient, but trying to bring more efficiency from an ultimately ineffective component will result in a waste of time and resources. Make sure your operations work first, then optimize them.

Final activities to achieve this phase involve your team members. Try to understand every one of your team members on a deeper level than just the abilities they bring to the table. Involve as many of them as needed in the decision-making process, especially those closest to what those decisions will affect. This will lead to the decisions being better-informed overall.

Phase 3: Do better for less.

Phase 3 involves looking into how you can improve and deliver at a better scale than before. The name of this phase really says it all – you want your operations to deliver something better than before at a lower cost than before. And this cost mentioned here isn't just financial, it involves improving with more efficiency in work quality with fewer resources needed, as well as tight, streamlined planning, strategy, and conceptualization that are guaranteed to work.

To do better for less, make sure you know how to lead your team. Take responsibility for the actions being undertaken, even though it's not necessarily just you making it all happen. As the leader, the buck stops with you. Don't let this hold you back though. Think big and positively influence your team to aspire to greatness. Another thing to understand as a leader is that there are a lot of unknowns in the world of strategy, so plan ahead for uncertainty. You'll want to have a clear goal in mind, but stay flexible on how to get there. Finally, don't forget to stay humble. Lead your team by example, and be open to input.

Achieving better results isn't something that will come to you by sticking to what you're comfortable with doing. Now is the time to experiment. There might be a method you're using that's worked in the past, but there also might be a better way to do it. You won't know until you get out there and try out new ideas.

As you improve your organizational leadership and willingness to try new things, also look into how you're running things day to day. To do better for less, you need to eliminate any bottlenecks in your operations. Analyze your organization and make sure you're properly optimized. Keep this in mind as you constantly strive for improvement, and set high standards for yourself and your teams. Shoot for great, not just good.

Lastly, know your team members and the areas in which they shine. Ensure they're doing the work they perform best in, and that they're appropriately compensated for the excellence they bring. You want your people to constantly create as much value as possible, and that's not going to happen if they're haphazardly assigned. Put them where they're at their best, and give them as much freedom as possible.

Phase 4: Continuously evolve.

In this fourth and final step, after having gained all the benefits from the last three phases, your focus should be set on the future. Use that focus to influence your activity in the present, so you're never stagnant or stuck in one place. In this phase, your business is in a constant state of evolution.

Here, your landscape is very important. Look at everything around you in your environment, and pull from it in finding your next step. Exploit every benefit and advantage as you need to keep growing and changing for the better. In this process, it's also very key to remember that anything can change at any point in time. What's essential today might be pointless tomorrow, and what doesn't seem important currently may be your primary focus before too long. Keep this in mind, and take actions that ensure your organization can flow with any changes you may experience.

Something you can learn from in your journey of continuous evolution is your network – your ecosystem that builds up your organization and its operations. Take care to tend to, interact with, and listen to them as much as possible. In doing this, you might uncover vital information to the next steps you'll be taking. Always make sure you're giving enough attention to each of your ecosystems.

At this phase, you can look at how your structure is organized, and make sure it's designed for growth and evolution. You shouldn't have to go through great efforts to re-structure and re-organize after a change or shift. Make sure you're built with these future changes in mind. This should apply not only to your organizational structure but also your overall company culture. Don't get too comfortable in one spot, and make sure everyone can keep up as you evolve.

These four phases include a lot of different organizational activities, but don't worry about trying to implement them all at once. The phases are set up sequentially so you can grow through them at your own pace. With this framework, you can identify the phase you're in, settle on immediate actions to take, and build out your strategy from there.

Try this free self-assessment tool we have built which allows you to measure against these industry benchmarks.

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