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Cascade and catchball

Carrying a strategic goal down into commitments, and letting the answers come back up and change it. The upward half is the part most cascades leave out.

The idea

How it works

A cascade that only goes down is an instruction. It produces commitments that people accepted rather than ones they believe are achievable, and the difference shows up two quarters later.

Catchball is the practice of throwing the goal down and having a counter-proposal thrown back. The level doing the work knows things the level setting the goal does not, and the goal should change in light of that. If it never changes, the exercise is a formality.

Working with it

In practice

  1. 01

    Send down the goal and the reasoning

    Not just the number. The team needs to know what problem it answers to propose a sensible alternative.

  2. 02

    Ask for a counter-proposal

    What could this team commit to, and what would it take? Expect it to differ from the ask.

  3. 03

    Negotiate, and record what changed

    The value is in the adjustment. If nothing moved, either the first ask was perfect or nobody spoke.

  4. 04

    Close with a commitment, not a target

    The difference is whether the person doing the work agreed it was possible.

One level in

The components of cascade and catchball

A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.

  1. The cascade brief

    The goal as sent down, with the reasoning behind it.

    Learn

  2. The counter-proposals

    What each team said it could commit to, and what it would need.

    Learn

  3. The agreed commitment

    The final version, with a record of what changed during the negotiation.

    Learn

Track how often the cascade changes the original goal. A rate near zero usually means catchball is being performed rather than done.

The other modules in tactical goals

Initiatives

The named, finishable pieces of work a tactical goal resolves into. Each with a start, an end, and something that exists afterwards which did not before.

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Ownership

One named person accountable for each goal, distinct from the people doing the work and from those merely informed.

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Resourcing

What the goal costs in money, people and attention, agreed before it is committed to. The test is whether the owner could describe the resource without checking.

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