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Strategic Initiatives

Strategic Initiatives

Caveats

  1. Contribution to initiatives Is Core, Not Conditional
    Whether you’re on a client engagement or not, contributing to Axelerant’s growth is an explicit expectation for everyone.

  2. No Idle Periods
    When client delivery isn’t taking all your time, the focus shifts to initiatives that move the organisation forward — building assets, improving processes, or sharpening skills.

  3. Accountability Is Personal
    Each person owns how they contribute. Time not spent on client work isn’t free time — it’s self-directed ownership of value creation.

  4. Recognition and Consequences Are Linked
    Contributions — on client projects or organisational initiatives — feed directly into recognition, skills growth, and career progression. Lack of contribution is visible and factored into performance conversations.

  5. Feedback Loop Is Built-In

    • Recognition: showcased in all-hands, Slack, or townhall updates.

    • Skills: mapped to growth paths and professional development.

    • Career: contributions are explicitly reviewed in performance evaluations and influence promotions.

Stakeholders

  • Executive/Account Leadership (also owners) → keep initiatives visible and aligned to business goals. provide light accountability (check-ins, outcomes).

    • Executive leadership - All members of the Slack channel @executive-group 

    • Account leadership - PM + TL of the particular account in consultation with Sales/Delivery/Engineering leadership

  • Team member → owns choosing and delivering on contributions.

Executive/Account Leadership

 

Activity

System

Notes

Curated Initiatives Backlog

  • Every item must tie to a business goal (sales asset, delivery process improvement, IP creation, marketing case study, etc.).

  • 10–15 active initiatives at a time within the backlog.

Go to JIRA goals and create a goal as per this template

Complete the checklist given in the template

 

 

To be created by anyone from the executive team. 

 

They can come up with a goal themselves or act as the owner of a goal/initiative proposed by a team member

Recognition 

  • Completion / Learning gets logged → recognised in weekly company comms or Slack.

  • Tie to performance review as “evidence of initiative + impact.” Even a small nod changes behaviour.

 

Recognition to be done by the owner on Leapsome

 

An individual can use the learnings for performance reviews/progression process as evidence

 

 

Availability 

  • Review the availability report to assess contributors' bandwidth and fitment

 

 

Team members 

Activity 

System

Prerequisite

Pull-based Self-Signup with Visibility

  • A team member picks an initiative from the curated backlog

 

Go to JIRA goals 

 

Review the goals; you can filter by tags/owners or other criteria

 

Assess fitment as per “Contributor Fit (Skillsets / Criteria for Participants)”

 

Reach out to the owner on the initiative-specific channel

Once you start contributing, perform the steps under Time logging and progress

owners' own curation and hygiene of goals and related tickets

 

Push-based (owner-requested assignment)

  • The owner requests and identifies the person to work on this

If an owner reaches out to you and  you start contributing, perform the steps under Time logging and progress

Not sure which initiative to pick up 

Use the Slack channel
#internal-support-goals. Avoid Slack DMs

Reviewed all the initiatives, and are unclear on what to contribute or how

Propose a goal or initiative

Reach out to an owner and propose a goal or initiative that would be beneficial to Axelerant

 

Time logging and progress
More on Strategic Initiatives Participation Guidelines

 

Create a JIRA ticket in the Axelerant Initiatives project with the name of the goal & assign it to yourself.

In case the Jira work item is linked already, do not create a new one.

These JIRA issues will sync with the mavenlink project

You are expected to log time against that ticket on the mavenlink project

Start making progress and checking in with your owner as per the check-in cadence for the goal

 

Keep documenting updates, learnings, risks and decisions  check-in cadence for the goal

When you are no longer able to contribute to the goal, update the same, as well as stating you are moving on to other work commitments

Get feedback from the owner

Use Leapsome to get feedback from the owner at an appropriate time

 

Metrics 

  • % of initiatives completed vs total

  • % of folks contributing to an initiative