David Holliday from Gate One

As explained in the opening post to the Art of Gridding series, in this series we seek to bring to life the various, innovative ways in which Method Grid is being used.

In this interview, Dom speaks to David Holliday at Gate One – a leading, UK-based business and digital transformation (consultancy) business.

The interview (see video below) covers a number of fascinating areas.

Primarily, it explores how Gate One (c. 65 staff currently) organised a one-day Hackathon to massively accelerate the firm’s capture of intellectual property on to their Method Grid platform. Indeed, in the spirit of a Hackathon, the aim was to sprint to a coherent and immediately-usable first iteration of their company toolbox – with a focus on their market-facing service propositions.

The interview digs into how the day was structured, initiated and facilitated – serving, hopefully, as an inspiration and guide for other growing/successful companies to do similar.

David also covers many other interesting aspects:

• Governance – how Gate One allocates the overall responsibility of managing Knowledge and IP within the firm and the role of Service Proposition Leads.
• How they organised themselves to ensure there was consistency/coherence across their methodology platform (both aesthetically and logically).
• The design principles they keep to when building out methodology and David’s top tips as to the ideal team size for grid development.
• The role Method Grid plays in their business with respect to client-facing delivery consistency but also ongoing new hire induction.
• The level of tangible output that is possible (five hours of productive time) within such a well-organised day.
• An exploration of what is even meant by a service proposition in the context of a firm’s go to market strategy.
• A look at Gate One’s Grid Library and a dive into a couple of grids: a client-facing service proposition and an internal methodology (that is used to manage their fascinating Incubator capability – the topic for another podcast!).
• The use of labelling to help navigate their current build-out of Grids.
• David’s overarching advice to firms just starting out on Method Grid and/or the topic of Knowledge/IP Management generally.
• His recommendations for future Method Grid enhancements that Gate One would like to see – and Dom’s response to these!

In conclusion, this is an excellent example of how a leading professional service business takes seriously, and invests in, the development of structured methodology – as a foundational engine for ever-ascendant growth and client-delivery success.

A huge thanks to David for his time in explaining how Gate One deploy Method Grid at the heart of this discipline.

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What next?

We will not be committing to any post frequency in this series – rather just a post every now and then when something really captures our eye. We have a few already lined up – but remember you have to invite us into your account for us to see what you are doing … so, if you have a Method Grid story you would like to tell, an innovative application of the product off of the norm … drop me a line. We would love to take a look and help you share it!

Please just message in the comments below or via our contact form or Twitter.

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Notes

You can find out more about Gate One here > https://gateone.co.uk