The Org Topologies MADE method introduces Elevating Katas to get change going.
“Kata” was popularized in management via Toyota, implying a disciplined and repeating pattern for improving. Each Elevating Kata is a repeatable, structured pattern or routine introduced into an organization’s ways of working that help teams and leaders build new capabilities, improve system-level performance, and “elevate” their overall approach to value delivery. Each Kata targets a specific org design element (structure, policy, process, …) and aims to shift in ways that provide incremental and scalable improvements.
When we speak of Elevating Katas we mean specific interventions or methods that guide an organization from its current level of maturity and flow towards more effective, systemic, and higher-order modes of working.
Each kata focuses on a particular area (such as governance, practices, roles, events, or artifacts) and is designed to shift mindsets, structures, or processes in a way that provides incremental, scalable benefits over time. By repeatedly practicing an Elevating Kata, organizations internalize more adaptive behaviors, enhance their management capabilities, and ultimately create a more responsive and learning-oriented culture.
Key characteristics of Elevating Katas include:
Purposeful Routine: They are not one-off changes but ongoing practices that teams perform regularly.
Incremental Improvement: Each iteration builds on the last, gradually increasing proficiency and confidence.
Systems-Level Focus: They often address underlying organizational design elements—like governance models, role definitions, and multi-team events—to improve end-to-end product delivery.
Empowering Teams and Leaders: By embedding these katas, organizations empower members at all levels to take ownership, adapt quickly, and focus on value.
Cultural Shift: Over time, Elevating Katas influence not just processes, but also the culture, encouraging transparency, continuous learning, and a broader understanding of “product” and customer outcomes.
In short, Elevating Katas are deliberate, repeatable, systemic, and strategic improvement routines that help organizations lift their practices to a higher, more impactful level.
"STRATEGIC" IS THE KEY HERE
Below is the method we've crystalized over the year that leads the way to strategic org design:
You can learn about the Change MADE Real method and its four steps, as it is essential to understand the MADE method to see the place of Elevating Katas in the landscape of Org Topologies.
Elevating Katas are principles, guidelines, and practices for systemic change. They are vehicles for the MADE method as they drive the elevation of an org ecosystem towards the top right archetype group of the map:
Here's how to make sure that the application of Elevating Katas is systemic:
Holistic Focus The Star Model suggests that changes must work at the system level, not just tweak one element. Elevating Katas, by their nature, aren’t isolated improvements; they target multiple facets—governance, roles, events, practices, and artifacts—ensuring shifts in behavior permeate through structures, processes, and ultimately how people collaborate.
Aligning Structures and Processes With Strategy For an organization’s strategy to truly drive capabilities, the operational design must support it. Elevating Katas introduce routines (such as multi-team Product Backlog Refinement or vertical slicing of work) that bring strategic goals into daily practice. This ongoing, repeated alignment of work routines with strategic direction ensures that structure and processes consistently support the desired capabilities and outcomes.
Enabling People and Role Evolution
The Star Model emphasizes that people and their roles must be in sync with overall organizational design. Elevating Katas like “Elevate Product Ownership” push beyond conventional role definitions, helping individuals expand their influence and understanding. Over time, these repeated learning loops shape new competencies, reinforce role clarity, and ensure that teams operate in harmony with new structures and strategic objectives.
Reinforcing Desired Behaviors and Culture “Culture programs” on their own often fail because they focus on abstract values rather than tangible changes in working patterns. Elevating Katas bridge the gap between desired cultural traits (like collaboration, customer-centricity, or continuous improvement) and everyday actions. By practicing these Katas systemically, the organization hardwires new behaviors into its fabric, leading to a naturally evolving culture—rather than attempting top-down cultural mandates.
5. Rewarding Continuous Improvement
Because Katas are iterative and repeatable, they create a continuous feedback loop. Over time, as these new practices become second nature, the organization inherently “rewards” them through improved outcomes—faster cycle times, better product-market fit, and more engaged teams. This closes the loop between the “Rewards” element of the Star Model and the actual behaviors that drive performance and cultural evolution.
Elevating Katas serve as the micro-level routines that continuously align the various elements of organizational design. They turn strategic intent into actionable steps, align structures and processes, enhance roles and competencies, and reinforce behaviors—thereby making the entire system function cohesively, just as the Star Model prescribes.
EXAMPLES OF ELEVATING KATAS
Elevating Katas are not one-off workshops or temporary campaigns. Instead, they are ongoing, disciplined practices that embed a new way of thinking and acting into the organization’s fabric. Each kata focuses on a particular dimension of how work is done—governance, roles, events, practices, or artifacts—offering a continuous improvement loop. By systematically revisiting and refining these routines, teams learn incrementally and develop deeper capabilities.
Below are some examples to give you a taste of what the Katas are.
Kata: Expand the “Product” Definition
Teams regularly revisit and broaden their view of the “product” to include not just a single application or service, but the entire ecosystem of customer experience, business processes, and complementary offerings.
Kata: Elevate Product Ownership
Product owners move beyond backlog management to become strategic influencers, actively connecting business goals with delivery teams. By consistently engaging in strategic alignment sessions and working closely with customers and stakeholders, product owners gradually learn to prioritize work that delivers the highest impact. Read more.
Kata: Hold Multi-Team Product Backlog Refinement (PBR)
Multiple teams that share a product domain collaborate in joint refinement sessions. Practicing multi-team PBR regularly ensures alignment, surfaces dependencies early, and harmonizes priorities across different delivery groups. Read more.
Kata: Slice Work Vertically
Rather than building features layer by layer (e.g., back-end first, then front-end), teams deliver thin, vertical slices of functionality that span the user interface, business logic, and data layer. Repeatedly practicing vertical slicing enables the team to deliver incremental value faster and reduce the risk of late integration issues.
Kata: Merge Product Backlogs
Instead of each team maintaining its own isolated backlog, organizations merge them into a single, shared product backlog. This practice, repeated regularly, leads to unified prioritization and improved transparency, ensuring that all teams work toward the same strategic objectives.
Kata: Define Shared "Done"
Teams adopt and periodically refine a common set of quality criteria that must be met before work is considered complete. Repeated application of this kata drives consistent quality standards and reliability across teams. Read more about DoD in LeSS.
Kata: Self-Select with Open Space and FAST
One way to sustain a broader work mandate is to allow teams and individuals within the Team-of-Teams to self-select work and their peers with the necessary skills to create value together. Read more about FAST, which stands for "Fluid Adaptive Scaling Technology". To facilitate self-selection at scale, this method combines 1) outcome-based product management, 2) open space technology, and 3) dynamic re-teaming.
Kata: Implement Beyond Budgeting
Organizations abandon rigid, annual budgeting cycles in favor of rolling forecasts, dynamic resource allocation, and more decentralized decision-making. Over time, this kata helps the organization become more responsive, adjusting investments as market conditions evolve. Read more on Beyond Budgeting.
Kata: Lead with OBEYA Strategically
Borrowed from lean management, “Obeya” involves creating a dedicated space (physical or virtual) where decision-makers convene regularly. By visually displaying strategic metrics, progress indicators, and customer feedback, leaders can make more informed, rapid decisions. Read more about Leading with Obeya.
Katas: Design Tailwind Career Paths
Instead of promoting through narrow, hierarchical ladders, individuals advance through capability growth and learning breadth. This kata involves regularly identifying new skill areas, setting capability-building goals, and providing supportive conditions—coaching, resources, and challenging projects—so individuals continuously gain new competencies. Over time, by repeating this practice, organizations cultivate multi-skilled, adaptable professionals whose career “tailwinds” come from developing a broad, flexible skill set aligned with strategic needs rather than climbing a predefined ladder. Read more.
Kata: Apply AI Strategically
Any management approach that doesn’t include AI as a central part of the future workforce, is of the past. We are rapidly entering a world of AI agents and humanoid robots playing a role at work and home. Evolving rightward on the horizontal axis to broader skills mandate will become ever easier due to AI. And likewise upward on the vertical axis to a broader work mandate. So, top-right Driving archetypes will become more feasible. More on applying AI strategically.
Kata: Measure and Improve Value with EBM
Org Topologies and Evidence-Based Management are distinct but highly complementary frameworks. Org Topologies provides the “where and how to change” from a structural perspective, ensuring the organization’s form enables agility and aligns with its purpose. EBM provides the “whether and why to change” from a value perspective, ensuring the organization’s operations remain focused on delivering measurable value and that any change is justified by evidence. More on OT with EBM.
More Katas
We are collecting and documenting Elevating Katas. Browse our Knowledge Base to learn more.
Conclusion
Leaders, rather than micromanaging or launching episodic “transformation programs,” can establish a handful of carefully chosen katas and ensure they are faithfully practiced. Over time, as people develop fluency in these routines, the organization’s agility and resilience increase. This approach to change is subtle but powerful, as it leverages the human capacity to learn by doing. Rather than relying solely on workshops or memos, it uses ritualized action to shape behavior and mindset.
Elevating Katas embody the principle that lasting organizational change arises from systemic coherence and incremental, behavioral shifts. By focusing on daily routines—how teams refine backlogs, how product definitions are broadened, how budgets are allocated, and how product owners engage with strategy—these katas directly influence the elements of Galbraith’s Star Model. The result is a more agile organization, one that continuously aligns its strategy, structure, processes, people, and rewards.
These katas do not offer a magic bullet; they demand patience, consistency, and intentional practice. Yet, this very requirement ensures authenticity. As habits form, culture evolves organically, and the organization’s capacity to learn and adapt deepens. In a world where the only constant is change, Elevating Katas serve as reliable instruments for shaping the future, guiding organizations toward sustained performance, relevance, and growth.
