Strategy.
The word means so many thing to so many people, but I prefer a simple definition provided by my friend and colleague Patrick Harris of thoughtengine. He crystalised the meaning of the word as “the plan that gets you from where you are now to where you want to be in the future.”
It’s simple but not simplistic.
I use this definition to guide my work in the area of strategic innovation.Β Often though there’s a need to make your strategy more than just a pile of black and white A4 documents.Β And, before you make the obvious retort, I’m also talkingΒ about those strategy documents that use colour.Β And, what’s more, those that useΒ – gasp – graphs.
The challenge is to make a strategy come to life so that people can not just understand it, but experience it.Β At the end of last week I ran a process to do just that – bring the Board of a NZ$1.3billion organisation up to date on the strategy.
Working with my colleagues we developed a concept where we mocked up an example of what the current service was like.Β We had real people talking to small groups from the Board about how things were done today and what the problems were with the service.
We then walked them through the strategy, but bought it to life.Β We mapped out the next twelve years from a customer point of view, and from an employee point of view.Β We used three points along the way (the years 2011, 2014 and 2017)Β to show how things could change and why they needed to change.Β By interacting with two scenarios, the Board were able to see what would happen if the organisation continued on it’s present path, and what would happen if the organisation was transformed.
At the end of the walk though we then had a mockup of what the service might look like in the year 2020, and why the mockup was a better outcome for the organisation, for the employees and for the customer.
The result was exactly what we had hoped for: a Board that was galvanised by the challenges that it faced.Β The Board not only understood the issues, but also had an excellent grasp of the complexities that were inherent in the strategy.
Now that’s something that you can’t do with paper.