Elevating Katas
Structured routines that turn organizational design intent into lived behavior
About Elevating Katas
The term kata comes from martial arts, where it describes a practiced sequence used to build skill and judgment through repetition.
In Org Topologies, Elevating Katas serve the same purpose: they provide a practical way to evolve an organization deliberately, without relying on one-off transformations or wholesale reorganizations.
The 10X Org principles set direction. They clarify what matters and what trade-offs are being made. The Katas make that direction actionable.
Rather than prescribing best practices, Katas create safe, repeatable ways to reshape structure, mandates, roles, processes, and incentives—while learning from real work.
Elevating Katas are problem-driven, not methodology-driven. Each Kata targets a specific organizational constraint and builds capability through use and reflection.
The Elevation Journey
Elevating Katas help move an organization toward the top-right corner of the Org Topologies map—where teams have both broad skills mandate and broad work mandate.
This is where organizations shift from delivering outputs to delivering outcomes—from fragmented component teams to complete, whole-product teams.
The journey involves moving from narrow, specialized teams (bottom-left) through deliberate elevation to versatile, outcome-oriented teams of teams (top-right).
Elevating Katas Catalog
The most powerful and commonly applied Elevating Katas, organized by the dimension of organizational design they address.
1. Strategy
Direction and Goals
Deliberately broaden what the organization considers "the product" so teams orient around real customer outcomes rather than narrow components or tasks.
Shift backlog items from output commitments to explicit outcome hypotheses, making learning and impact visible in everyday prioritization.
Reduce fragmentation by consolidating competing backlogs into fewer shared ones, forcing real prioritization at the level where value is created.
Replace temporary project slices with long-lived ownership of products, preserving learning and accountability over time.
Create regular, direct contact between teams and customers so decisions are informed by reality rather than assumptions or proxies.
Remove locally optimizing product ownership that fragments decisions and weakens strategic coherence.
Position product ownership where strategic intent and value meet, with responsibility for outcomes rather than team-level delivery coordination.
2. Structure
Power, Authority, Organization
Create a lightweight structure where teams align around shared goals while retaining autonomy in execution.
Shift management focus from individual teams to multi-team value areas, enabling coordination and learning across boundaries.
Introduce explicit structure for coordinating multiple teams working on one product without adding layers of control.
Enable cross-team flow and self-selection of work through shared visualization and pull-based coordination.
Remove separate units responsible for "preparing" or "finishing" work by moving quality and completion into the teams that create the work.
Expand technical ownership boundaries so teams can improve and fix issues without waiting on specialists or gatekeepers.
3. Processes
Information and Decision Flows
Establish a common baseline for completeness and quality, reducing hidden work and late surprises.
Practice breaking work into end-to-end increments that deliver learning and value, not partial progress.
Reduce integration risk and delays by integrating work continuously across all the contributing teams and agents rather than batching it late.
Bring multiple teams together regularly to build a shared understanding of upcoming work, risks, and coordination before execution.
Inspect integrated product outcomes rather than isolated team outputs, keeping learning at the right level.
Turn reviews into active inspection by letting stakeholders interact directly with the work and provide real feedback.
Use a shared decision space to connect strategy, evidence, and organizational design constraints, enabling deliberate topology evolution rather than merely tracking delivery.
Use a small set of meaningful measures in regular reviews to guide learning and improvement, rather than managing by objective.
Simulate the new design by doing a hands-on workshop solving a problem using the new mandates to allow people to experience rather than theorize.
4. Rewards
Incentives and Motivation
Create career systems that reward capability growth and multi-learning to support employees' contribution to valuable outcomes.
Loosen rigid annual planning constraints so resources can move as learning and priorities change.
Reduce incentive structures that drive local optimization at the expense of system performance.
Enable people to contribute where value is highest, building flexibility and shared ownership.
5. People
Skills, Mindsets, Capabilities
Use AI to lower the cost of learning new skills while delivering, expanding what teams can responsibly take on.
Use collaborative work to spread knowledge, reduce dependency on individuals, and raise collective capability.
Let people choose work based on interest and urgency, unlocking energy and surfacing real priorities.
Case Studies
Real-world examples of Elevating Katas in action. See how organizations have transformed their structures and outcomes.
Poster
Ukrainian SaaS Company
The CEO gave employees 90 days to learn systems thinking and organizational design. They co-created a better future state together.
Katas Demonstrated
The change built real adaptiveness through COVID-19 and war—back to profitability within a year.
Read Full Case StudyMore Case Studies
Organizations applying Elevating Katas
We're documenting more real-world applications of Elevating Katas across different industries.
Stay tuned for upcoming case studies
Ready to Transform Your Organization?
Elevating Katas are part of the comprehensive framework in the 10X Org book. Start your elevation journey today.