Dotwork is built for product and technology leaders who need a more insightful, adaptive way to drive their business forward. As the first AI-native platform for strategic planning and operations, Dotwork aligns to your target operating model - aligning goals, driving execution, and improving outcomes without the manual overhead. Whether you’re stuck in spreadsheets, using legacy platforms, or having trouble scaling low-code tools, Dotwork provides a modern approach to how organizations manage complexity and drive outcomes at scale.
External link for Dotwork
Dotwork reposted this
The work we’re doing at Dotwork isn’t easy. It requires judgment, ownership, and a willingness to solve problems that don’t stay still for long. This group shows up with low ego, high standards, and a commitment to doing the work behind the work. The part most people never see, but everyone relies on. Thankful to be building alongside them.
Future companies will not try to eliminate complexity. They will learn to design around it. When order and chaos are shaped with intention, teams move with clarity instead of friction. This creates a foundation where AI can support better decisions, not amplify confusion. Read the full article by John Cutler on preparing operations for continuous transformation: 👉 https://lnkd.in/eF5NHACh For more from John on how leaders think about work and systems, listen to his Mind the Product podcast episode: 🎧 https://lnkd.in/gbGeeTkQ #dotwork #systemsdesign #connectedcontext
9 out of 10 executives believe their operating model needs a fundamental redesign in the next three years. Companies feel the pressure, but few have the structure to respond with clarity and speed. Designing the future company means creating a system that learns, adapts, and clarifies intent in real time. It is less about building processes and more about shaping coherence. What would you redesign first in your company? #dotwork #futureofwork #operatingmodel
We see you John Cutler and yes… we’ve all met that leader. Episode drops tomorrow and it’s a good one.
"If a leader digs too deeply into how you work, it's considered not being very strategic.' John Cutler, Head of Product at Dotwork. 👀 Podcast sneak peek time! The full episode drops tomorrow, don't miss it 👉https://bit.ly/4qmsuEs
Dotwork reposted this
Board Member | NED | Advisor | Coach | Founder | Speaker | Author | Connecting the dots between customers, technology and business success since 1994
Your annual budgeting process is command-and-control in disguise. John Cutler's post on Governance by Principle, Not by Template exposes an uncomfortable truth: those project codes and funding rituals aren't accounting requirements—they're choices we've made to feel in control. As John writes: "Project and program codes, allocations, etc., are governance mechanisms, not accounting categories." This sparked something I've been observing across hundreds of companies: command-and-control hasn't disappeared from modern organisations. It's simply migrated from org charts to budgets. When boards don't understand technology, they control through financial mechanisms. The result? Financial theatre that destroys the very value it's meant to protect. My latest article builds on John's insights to explore how we got here and—more importantly—how we fix it. Read John's piece first, then mine. Together, they map the path from financial theatre to principled governance. #ProductManagement #DigitalTransformation #Leadership #Governance #AgileTransformation
"This is not just a legacy-enterprise issue. A lot of the hype around the “product operating model” has very little coherence with how many tech companies actually think about investment and allocation. You still find spreadsheets full of initiatives, capacity, and time-tracking. Finance keeps asking teams to slice the data in new ways: customer segments, horizons, products, value drivers. One day, it is BAU vs. strategic. The next day, it is the Kano model. The day after that, there are five new allocation categories. CTO 5. CEO 20. And sometimes all of it is required at once. Teams near the “edge” with customers might have an easier time, but all bets are off for platform teams deep in the value chain. They have the same complaints about perverse incentives and the gap between procedural legitimacy and substantive legitimacy. You also find perverse models where companies pretend there are separate “business units” (with VPs and GMs) for the sake of simplified P&L tracking and governance, even though the underlying work is far more integrated and platform-like than anyone wants to admit. I mention all of this to to assure you that the issues are pervasive." https://lnkd.in/gV8PMXrP
Some leaders care deeply about the why behind their work. Others focus on motion and activity. John Cutler, Dotwork’s Head of Product, talked about the difference between leaders who treat how they work as a product and leaders who treat it as routines to repeat. The teams that adapt quickly usually have leaders who are curious about coherence, not just output. This mindset creates the conditions for faster learning and better decisions. How does your team build coherence into the way it works? 🔗 Watch the full AMA session with John now: https://lnkd.in/gF3xA2Xb
When your process moves in a straight line, learning slows down. Traditional cycles like plan, execute, report, and reset make teams wait too long to learn. Decisive teams build learning into the work. Loops help them see what is changing and adapt before the next cycle begins. What helps your team learn faster? 🔗 Visit the Dotwork website to learn more: https://dotwork.ai
Dotwork reposted this
When you ask a company how they work, within the first two minutes someone will point to an intent tree. Three-year goals → one-year goals → strategic pillars → OKRs → initiatives → epics → work items. Useful… but absolutely not the full picture A few examples of what gets completely obscured in these trees: 1. How influence actually flows Two companies can have the exact same tree, but in one the teams genuinely shape strategy...and in the other teams are stuck at the bottom executing whatever comes down. 2. The shape and size of work “Key initiative” means something totally different when it involves 2.5 tribes for 12–20 weeks vs 1 tribe for 2–4 weeks. Same label, wildly different collaboration patterns 3. Shared teams and competing priorities Every department saying their request is P0 doesn’t mean the cost of delay is the same. Separate budgets create totally different outcomes than shared prioritization. A tree will never show this. 4. Dependency structure Two teams can be pointed at the same metric. One has minimal dependencies and experiments weekly. The other requires a giant coordinated rollout with multiple handoffs. On the tree, both look identical. 5. Type of team, type of bet A “program” looks neat in a hierarchy, but the reality is new-offering teams, growing teams, margin-optimizing teams, sustaining teams...they all work differently and produce different shapes of work. 6. Cross-cutting business + tech realities Three business segments with separate P&Ls + one shared R&D pool + shared product/platform teams = a completely different operating challenge than a tidy functional tree suggests. 7. The revenue chain is uneven A checkout-conversion team has a direct, clean line to revenue. A design-system team is essential but connects to revenue through several hops. A tree won’t show the real path between work and value. 8. Overlapping vs. diverging perspectives Intent, funding, value chain, collaboration patterns sometimes overlap neatly. More often, they drift apart as companies scale. That's the challenge Intent graphs/trees are helpful, but they’re only a small part of the picture. Most of the real operating model is in the relationships, interfaces, funding flows, dependencies, team types, and context collisions the tree doesn’t capture. That's what we try to model at Dotwork, and why custom fields and labels just don't cut it.
A good constraint is easy to understand and surprisingly flexible. John Cutler shared how effective constraints have a few things in common. They are simple enough to explain in a sentence and strong enough to guide an entire cycle. When constraints have these qualities, they support pace without sacrificing clarity. What type of constraint helps your team stay focused? 👉 Watch the full AMA session here: https://lnkd.in/gF3xA2Xb
A constraint can help work move or slow it down. The line is not always clear. In the AMA session last week, John Cutler shared how something as simple as a small team can be an enabling constraint. Adding more people might feel like it should speed things up, but it often creates more coordination, more juggling, and less progress. The right constraint creates focus. It gives people guardrails that help them think about the work in a clearer way. How do you decide which constraints are helping? 🎥 Watch the full AMA session here: https://lnkd.in/gF3xA2Xb