Elevating Katas are repeatable, structured patterns or routines 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.
The term “kata” comes from martial arts, where it refers to a choreographed practice sequence. In a business or organizational transformation context, a kata is similarly a deliberate routine—one that is practiced repeatedly to reinforce learning, develop consistent habits, and foster continuous improvement.
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 structures—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 improvement routines that help organizations lift their practices to a higher, more impactful level.
"SYSTEMIC" IS THE KEY HERE
We all are familiar with Jay Galbraith's "Star Model" postulating that the organizational design elements (i.e., structure, process, rewards, people) need to be in high alignment to deliver expected organizational capabilities (or "org design criteria" as Jay called them in his original paper).
Elevating Katas are a means to embed systemic change into the organization’s day-to-day operations and culture, aligning closely with models like Jay Galbraith’s Star Model, which highlights the importance of coherent organizational design.
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: 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: Vertical Slicing of Work
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.
Shared Definition of Done (DoD)
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: 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
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: 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.
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.
