2. Strategy Prototyping
Introduction
In today’s volatile, complex and
ambiguous landscape,
companies are facing some
serious challenges when trying
to come up with the right
strategy.
4. Strategy Prototyping
The Evolution of Strategy
Agile isn’t just for development and
design anymore. Organizations have
begun to realize that it can also be
applied to a traditionally slow function:
strategy.
Tim Leberecht, Strategy artist and Ted speaker
5. Strategy Prototyping
How to act in uncertain times
When facing the unknown, act your way
into the future that you desire, don’t
think your way into it. Thinking does not
change reality, nor does it necessarily
lead to any learning.
Leonard A. Schlesinger, Harvard Business School
6. Strategy Prototyping
Combining the
power of design,
agile & classical
strategy consulting
In our volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous times
strategy consulting needs a reinvention through
Introduction
7. Strategy Prototyping 701 / 20
From To
• Working sequentially, only
making first step when whole
plan is in place
• Risk management through
predictability and maturity
• Working behind closed doors
• Using business data as the core
foundation
Here’s how strategy
consulting needs to
evolve
• Small, iterative steps (hypothesis
> prototyping > user validation)
• Risk management through
speed, fast learning and viability
• Open collaboration between
consultants & clients
• Use user data to develop a
coherent strategy based on
desirability
Introduction
8. Fjord Brand Story 2017
:
01 / 2001 / 20
Exercise:
Develop a
Strategy MVP
11. Strategy Prototyping
Intro Exercise
Who is
Okcupid
Highly
fragmented
market
Online dating has
won in popularity
in all ages,
including older
people
Tinder reinvented
the market and has
over one billion
swipes / day
14. Strategy Prototyping
1. Reframe the
Ask
2. Identify
concepts that
align with the
new objective
3. Choose KPIs to
measure the
concepts
Exercise – Activities
20 min
16. Strategy Prototyping
Key take-aways
Keep humans at
the center
Work in parallel
with multiple data
lenses
Rethink
your
strategy
approach Focus on learning,
outcomes and
impact
Iterate (refine your
strategy with each
iteration)
Do you also get overwhelmed sometimes by what’s going on in the world? (check intro from Martin’s talk)
We live in very volatile, complex and ambiguous times.
Liquid customer expectations, an increasing pace of change often driven by technological advancements and fierce competition lead to uncertainty.
If we’re honest, we basically have now idea what is going to happen.
So how come that most strategy approaches today are still based on prediction and take very long?
Feels wrong, doesn’t it?
More and more people think that the classical strategy approach is problematic when dealing with uncertainty
And they give us hints about what it should rather be or how we need to change our strategy approach.
(Read quote)
(Read quote)
We’re suggesting 5 fundamental changes to the strategy approach of which I will highlight the two most important from my perspective (#1 and #2)
#1: The value of an in-depth discovery and planning phase are undisputed. But companies have less and less time for them. And how often have you crafted a meticulous three-year strategic plan, only to have it become obsolete after a few months, or even weeks?
#4: It’s of course fine too look at your competition but too often looking in your own industry doesn’t give you the answers you need in a world where customer expectations transcend industry borders. Focusing on maturity of solutions often can be brought back companies being risk aware, the fear of failure is high. A more nimble approach doesn’t mean more risk – actually the opposite is true: if you don’t take forever to start but rather focus on fast learning in order to reduce risk.
In a nutshell this means that in uncertain times, insight and action beats planning.
By combining different approaches like design thinking, lean approaches and classical strategy consulting methods we can achieve this nimbler approach.
To stay true to our earlier statement that action beats thinking, we’d like you to experience a different approach first hand today…
What we’d like to leave you with after this exercise is in order to rethink your strategy approach,
Keep humans ….
So that Uncertainty actually becomes your secret weapon.