🗒 Summary
Alicia joined us to share the DVF framework - Desirability, Viability, Feasibility - and how People leaders can use it to stop launching initiatives nobody asked for, kill the endless ideas flying at them, and show up as genuinely strategic in the room. Bottom line: most People teams are great at caring, but struggle to back it up with rigor. DVF is how you change that.
📡 The Core Idea
👉 Strong organisations don't have better HR - they have sharper problem solvers People leaders are closest to the problems. The challenge isn't a lack of good ideas, it's that without a filter, you end up spending 6 months on the wrong ones. DVF is that filter.
👉 What DVF actually means Desirability: do people want this? Viability: will it add value to the business, and what will it cost? Feasibility: do we have the capability to actually deliver it? The third one gets skipped most often. That's where budgets blow and engineering relationships go to die.
👉 It's a mindset, not a methodology Over time you stop needing to consciously apply the framework. It becomes how you approach any new idea, initiative, or stakeholder conversation. That's when it's really working.
👉 The framework is your secret - not your pitch Don't walk into a room and announce you're using DVF. Use it as the structure behind your language. Different stakeholders care about different parts of the lens - your CFO cares about V, your CTO cares about F, your line managers care about D. Speak their language, not the acronym.
⚡ How DVF Works in Practice: The Three Phases
Participation (before you plan anything) Get your stakeholders involved at the earliest possible stage. Stand in their shoes. A line manager at half 12 on a Thursday and a CFO staring at Q2 budgets will react very differently to the same idea. Knowing that before you pitch is the whole game. Stakeholder mapping here could take a day or more - don't rush it.
Planning (the DVF Design Canvas) Map the idea across all three lenses: who are your user segments, what problem does it solve, what's the value proposition (Desirability); what's the ROI, cost, and how do you measure success (Viability); what capabilities, resources, and first version do you need (Feasibility). This canvas becomes your conversation starter and your data capture tool.
Prioritisation (assumption testing) Translate what's on the canvas into an assumptions card: what do we believe is true, what does success look like if it works, how will we test it, and how will we know we're right. Get a balance of assumptions across D, V and F so all three stakeholders feel like their concerns are being addressed before you pilot anything.
✅ What You Should Do: A Practical Step Plan
1. Stop letting conviction substitute for evidence It doesn't matter how excited the CEO is after a conference. Conviction without evidence is just noise. Your job is to route every idea through this filter before you spend a single hour on it.
2. Map your stakeholders before you map your idea Who needs to want it (D), who needs to fund it (V), who needs to build or maintain it (F)? Do that mapping first. If budget is always the blocker, you haven't spent enough time on the viability conversation early enough.
3. Fill out a DVF canvas before you pitch Plan before you pitch. A rough canvas takes an hour and will save you six months of momentum on the wrong thing. It also makes you look like the strategic leader you already are.
4. Build an assumptions card from the canvas Don't just map the idea - map what you'd need to test to prove it works. Set your success metrics specifically. "Managers are happier" is not a metric. "Feedback completion rate up 20% after 60-day pilot" is.
5. Lead with their language, not your framework Use the DVF to structure how you think, not what you say. One stakeholder cares about cost. One cares about capability. One cares about whether their team will actually use it. Speak to each of those directly. Leave the acronym in your notes.
6. Use it on existing initiatives too DVF isn't just for new ideas. At each iteration or feedback loop on a live initiative, run a quick check: is it still desirable, still delivering value, still feasible to maintain? That's how you avoid zombie programmes nobody uses but nobody kills.
7. Make it your filter, not your process The goal is for DVF to become instinctive. You stop asking "should I apply the framework?" and start just thinking through every idea this way automatically. That's when you become genuinely hard to ignore in a leadership conversation.