Org Culture 03: Operational Structures

The Charter and the Mission define the aspirational philosophy of The Ship.That’s great! The next step is to establish operations that I think will actually fulfill those aspirations in the real world. This section will be more of an outline, defining the concepts that I think will provide structured tasks that fulfill the Ship’s main purpose. That purpose is creating belonging.

As it happens, I already have a system based on the concept of Expeditions, Campaigns, and Sorties.A sortie is conceptually similar to a sprint in Agile Software Development, which is a scope-limited period of time during which a particular objective is worked toward. I liked the idea of a more romantic framing.. This maps well onto the idea of a Ship, I feel.

Expeditions - Organizing for Exploration

Expeditions are essentially projects. They are planned activities that fulfill some need of the ship’s charter or yearly mission. They have a starting date and an ending date, with a starting directive to investigate. At the end of the expedition, whatever is found or created is logged.

Campaigns - Targeted Strategic Objectives

Campaigns are like subprojects. They are also planned activities that are designed to fulfill a strategic goal related to an expedition. Campaigns are more tactical, though, in that they arise based on what is encountered in the field as conditions change.

Sorties - Daily Tactical Actions

Sorties are like the subtasks in a project. These are short, running from a few hours to a day or so, and have limited scope.

A sortie is a known type of activity that is well understood, like making an omelet or delivering a package. By comparison, expeditions and campaigns have a lot of unknowns that need to be discovered, which requires a different kind of thinking. Sorties help convert that uncertainty into certainty by providing real world data.

Examples of Sortie Types