I’ve been wrangling with the “top down”, “bottom up”, “inside out”, “outside in” approaches to change.

I’m a big fan of the four box grid and you’ve guessed it I have a new one. The grid divides up the “bottom up” and “top down” on one axis and the “inside out” and “outside in” on the other axis

Looking back at the many change programmes I’ve been involved in and the many eras of change. I can recognise those eras that could have made dominant impressions within the four boxes.

“Bottom up” and “inside out”

The “bottom up” and “inside out” box was definitely most dominant in eras where the business model and system landscape had become totally fragmented be that due to mergers and acquisitions or due to years of undesigned, uncoordinated planning.

In this box every area of the business focused on current state. Looked at all the pain points from an internal perspective to take out internal friction and drive change at the team or system level that was often leading to consolidation and rationalisation

The COO and the CFO were critical stakeholders looking predominately for efficiency and continuous improvement type practices with the CIO providing SMEs in the current system landscape looking for consolidation, rationalisation changes and improvements.

“Top down” and “outside in”

The “top down” and “outside in” was definitely most dominant in eras where the strategic focus was on the opportunities to explore new markets or reposition the business in an existing market.

In this box rising talent, adaptive thinkers were seen in breakout groups looking at market trends and customer insight and looking at how a new set of business models could be needed to address the gap in the business portfolio.

These activities often led to innovation labs and proof of concepts where the majority of things being explored were new and it was encouraged to think differently and be different.

The focus of this group was very much future state with little time being spent on current state.

The key stakeholders in this space were often the business units MDs, Segment leads and the more innovative aspects of the CIO teams looking out to new IT suppliers and innovative tech.

“Bottom up” and “outside in”

The “bottom up” and “outside in” was definately most dominant when the business felt as if it was in the right markets but was aware of some competitive challenges and needed to respond.

In this era current state pain points were married up with future state opportunities and Target Operating Model programmes aimed at moving all aspects of the business forward dominated.

These initiative often lead to “transformational programmes” being set up driving “replatforming” of current systems to the best in class future platforms or processes to new outsourcing and offshore partners.

The key stakeholders in this box weee again the COO, the CFO and the CIO providing expertise in the current and innovative thinkers in the new.

“Top down” and “inside out”

Now this one is the difficult one; it feels like it could easily be confused with a few of the other boxes.

I’m struggling to find examples where I have worked on eras that addressed these aspects.

The only eras where I guess I could see this sort of approach happening across the organisation was when a new CEO or more often head of function or segment arrived. Without the detailed knowledge of the bottom. They focused on the top down view – looked at the macro rather than the micro and looked for their existing teams to address the macro areas.

The existing teams then delved down to the detail, were internally focused and tried to answer the challenges set by looking at how to improve but maybe coming to much from the bottom up and inside in.

Every 4 box grid needs its problem child and dog and I’m not sure if this part of the grid is the dog or the problem child … if I reflect it was probably more of a temporary state and soon approaches bounced into one of the other boxes it’s only if it stayed in this box that it became a dog and often the senior new arrival moved on to lead another aspect of change in the business or left to join companies that would no doubt have put them in one of the other boxes of the grid

When I look at the role and focus of the enterprise architecture team in each of these boxes, as per many of the other progressive enterprise architecture articles for me it demonstrates how the EA team need to be close to the senior stakeholders, need to be close to the core strategy that the business is pursuing and needs to focus its models and starting points appropriately to link with the strategy of the day.

What are your thoughts do you recognise this?