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Strategic Leadership

2.01 Robust strategy implementation

Robust strategy implementation – How to do it!

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I’m so excited about today’s topic! I’m talking about strategy implementation – robust strategy implementation, that is! Together with my colleagues, we have collected experiences about good strategy implementations from many people. This is my crystallized presentation about it.

Six key factors need to be in order if and when a robust strategy implementation is desired.

Good strategy – weak implementation

Having gone through a strategy process, people are often delighted with their good results. But why is it that often the strategy won’t take off? The reason most likely is bad implementation. The strategy can be as good as ever, but it’s not enough! It is, of course, possible that the strategy indeed is weak. In any case, a good strategy needs a good implementation.

Good strategy. Two arrows from left to right. Grey arrow curving up towards a sun. A horizontal arrow points towards person.

In many organizations, people think that they must know how implementation works. Having gone through hundreds of strategy processes, I can say that a good implementation is a skill! It can be done better or less good. 

Let’s go through the elements of a robust implementation. 

Robust strategy implementation

  1. A good meeting structure is required to follow up the implementation process frequently. 
  2. Dividing goal responsibilities, resourcing, and prioritizing need to take place. 
  3. People need to be involved in goal implementation and subgoal planning. 
  4. Every goal needs to be broken down into actions and be put in a work pile, out of which a few tasks are picked for the next sprint. A sprint is a calendar time, a week, for instance. 
  5. Leadership requires good tools, most likely a new and better tool. This isn’t run on Excel nor PowerPoint because it isn’t efficient enough. This is done with better tools, and they barely cost anything! 
  6. Investment is needed for a robust implementation to happen. One must invest to win. 

If even ONE of these six points is forgotten, IT WON’T WORK. 

Let’s look at each point separately. 

1. A tuned meeting structure

Most organizations are based on a hierarchical organization in the background. It has many good qualities. Nowadays, it’s wise to compensate for its weaknesses with agile teams. Frequent meetings are needed for the implementation: Management team meetings, sub-management team meetings, etc. 

Organizational hierarchy structure with teams on top beside a bullet point list.

The meeting agenda must frequently include strategy implementation. This is how goals are easily followed up. When a plan has been completed, one proceeds to the next plan or tweaks the previous one. The idea of nothing being set in stone is fundamental. It creates agility! 

Conclusions made during a management meeting need to be shared with the whole staff. Nowadays, written notes can be automatically reported. The idea of sharing the management’s plans is shocking in many cultures. However, it hides a great opportunity for a robust implementation. If any documentation is done, it needs to be opened up to everyone else and explained verbally. With Microsoft Teams, this can be done very efficiently. 

The strategy should be looked at and updated quarterly. Of course, it doesn’t need to be renewed all the time, but when implementation proceeds, there comes a need to make changes to the plan. The market and the competition situations change all the time.  

The idea of switching from a yearly plan to a quarterly plan is very powerful! 

2. Resourcing and timing

Strategic goals often need to be broken down into subgoals because strategic goals are such high-quality goals. Subgoals require people to be in charge of them and teams to implement them. This is when prioritizing is a must. A roadmap can be created to see what needs to be done in the first phase. An ambitious deadline by which the job is done is also needed. It gives people a little kick. 

“What would the world be like without the last minute?” 

Drawing of a person beside a darts board. Includes headline: “2. resourcing and timing” and bullet points goal responsibilities.

The workload is a tough challenge. Key persons are always needed in every project while they already have their hands full. A leader that doesn’t fill the employees’ day with work is a bad leader! When new goals are created, what’s done to the old ones? Prioritizing and time liberation needs to occur so that the key persons’ workload won’t go out of hand. Balancing the workload is important, which is why the workload should be visualized to see how much work everyone has. 

If this isn’t done, nothing is ready on time! 

3. Excitement in the work

Excitement is needed! People need to be involved in the planning. At Stradigo, we talk much about the benefits of involving as many people as possible already in strategic planning.  People are capable of understanding even though they are operative in nature! In fact, my motto is: 

“Head in the clouds, but with really long legs!” 

When people can see the process from above, the helicopter perspective, they suddenly begin to understand what’s going on! That’s when motivation increases. 

Drawing of three persons in front of a sector with an indigo arrow and a sun. Involve people in planning. Create ownership and meaning.

When people are also involved in subgoal planning, it creates ownership and meaning! The energy that erupts is truly worth money! 

Give people responsibility and also power to implement; all things don’t need to be taken upstairs. The decision is made there where the information is, close to the customer interface. 

It’s also important to a leader to increase ambition, stretch goals and subgoals, and the schedule. If goals are too tough, people get demotivated. If goals are too loose, there will be no growth. It’s a delicate balance! A true talent. A leader with no ambition won’t have a successful organization. Increase ambition! Ambition is like fitness: one can always be in better shape. 

Increase ambition and speed! 

4. Goal planning

Build work piles for every goal and plan them in a week, or maximum in two weeks! Plans are created quickly, and this is where a third-party resource is often good to have. Plans will become alike, and an outsider is able to challenge them better. In result, one receives better plans and quickly! 

Drawing of a worklog as a stack of folders, two persons running, headline “4. Goal planning” and bullet points: build work piles, create goal plans…

Goals of course need to be prioritized. Agility means that work is done in weekly sprints. A clear pile of documents is a must. Tasks are picked from the pile, which are carried out during the next sprint. A sprint is never late because it’s a calendar time! After the sprint, a meeting is held, in which the tasks are followed up to see if they were executed and the next tasks are picked for the following sprint. If something wasn’t finished on time, it is put back in the pile to wait for tweaking in the next sprint.  

This is agile leadership and goal planning! 

5. Leadership tools

In order for this whole process to succeed, leadership tools are required! One must be able to see the strategy implementation visually! It requires a good tool for leadership, a digital board. We at Stradigo prefer to use Trello for this, which is free for basic use. The premium version is, of course, good to have eventually. This as well is very affordable. 

Drawing of a dashboard with red, yellow, and green dots. People looking at the dashboard and headline “5. Leadership tools” and bullet points.

Use a good tool for leadership. The idea is that it’s transparent for everyone and that everyone is able to edit the plan, the digital board, simultaneously. I’ve heard of no one editing Excel simultaneously. In that sense, Excel is more of an individual’s tool. PowerPoint is also very slow, even though the outcome is fine. Editing a digital board is so much faster. 

Here comes the magic! A fine-tuned tracking structure must be set on the digital board. The differences in quality can be big in this task! 

At Stradigo, we have for five years used a digital board and enhanced the structure constantly. The idea of visualizing the tracking structure is an extremely great thing. If one does this for a profession, the cases will teach to use the tech. I myself have worked with over a thousand digital boards with our customers, and I always learn new tricks! “The devil is in the details!” 

We visualize progress with traffic lights. We don’t make people attend courses; we learn these systems on the go. Take small steps! This is how this tool is taken into practice quickly in order for implementation. 

This tool is the backbone of implementation! 

6. Arrange financing

The last point is to arrange financing for the implementation process. Very often if an outsider is bought to facilitate a strategy, the management’s first idea is to get rid of them as fast as possible. Involve the outsider in facilitation! Change requires investment. One gets more out of it more quickly! Payback time is very short when it comes from extra income and cost-efficiency. 

Drawing of a dashboard with red, yellow, and green dots. People looking at the dashboard and headline “5. Leadership tools” and bullet points.

Implementation, therefore, needs to be prioritized in the budget. In the beginning, people might not have even understood to budget, because the budget has been made beforehand. I think the CEO should take responsibility for the big picture, and to not go spreading the money into the units. Otherwise, it creates a huge amount of small decisions and it only slows the process down immensely. In the first year, the investment is taken from the entirety. It isn’t a big sum of money comparing to the benefits. 

All the points were there!

Summarizing drawing of six images that describe Stradigo’s six phase robust strategy implementation principles.

Take all six key points of robust strategy implementation into use! Don’t forget a single one. I’m truly excited about this, this is how the game is won!  

Ignite your strategy! Read more.🔥 

Finding Us On Social Media

Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.

Categories
Strategic Planning

1.05 Vision is useless!

Vision is useless! – Wait what?! Replace it with The Purpose | 1.05

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In this blog we will up the ante. I claim that it is useless to have a vision. Yes, you read that correctly. A vision is useless, at least in the form I’ve seen in many companies. Let me explain how this situation can be improved. Come along for the ride. Let the journey begin!

Vision is difficult to define

Drawing of a person that is sweating and who is looking into a crystal ball.

First of all, it’s really hard to define the word vision. Many start sweating while trying to find a crystal ball that can predict the future. But all crystal balls are sold out and they’re no longer manufactured. At the same time, there’s pressure to have a vision. Then people start to figure out what it is. 

Multiple arrows going into multiple directions surrounded by questions marks. Red text above the figure: “Vision doesn’t direct”

When the vision has been defined, it very often doesn’t give a direction to anything. It’s easily just a fine word. 

Text: “Leading Best No.1 Most wanted”

 Here’s what happens in almost 95% of all companies: Everyone wants to be number one. The best and the most wanted, that’s their vision. When I ask them “Isn’t being number one a status?”  They answer: “Yes.” 

Customers grant you your position

Text: “Who? The customers!”

My next question is: “Who gives you this status?”. Easy answer: THE CUSTOMERS! 

Text: “What do you do? …ooops.”

Follow-up question: “What is it exactly that you do to deserve such an honor?” …And then comes the “OOPS!” They don’t know. 

Something is wrong with this idea! Can it be fixed? What is the catch behind the whole thing? 

Bubble with indigo borders that contains “#1” and a needle that is puncturing the bubble. Text above the bubble: “Empty sentence”

The problem is that sentences are empty, and the bubble is easy to puncture. I have a feeling that many companies define the number one -status because that’s how they can easily get rid of the situation. Being number one is important for the stock owners because they know that the marketing director earns the most. That’s why it’s inspiring for them. However, it doesn’t direct or lead the operation, it’s an empty sentence! 

Let’s puncture the bubble and see what can be done.

Why is a vision sentence needed?

Text in bullet points: “To create meaning, To give direction, to create a responsible business, to increase excitement.”

What is the basic idea behind this? Why is a vision sentence needed? 

The first reason is very important for business: To create meaning both to us and the customers. 

It should also give direction, but if the direction is to be number one, what direction is it giving us? How does one become number one? What do we need? Direction is very important, which I agree with.  

The vision must help to create a responsible business. A very desirable state. 

The vision should also increase people’s energy levels and excitement. People should feel it’s great to work in this company because they are fulfilling their purpose. Perhaps the most famous vision sentence is by J.F. Kennedy: 

“I want to have a man on the moon before the end of the sixties” 

The excitement! It was a vision, but at the same time, one could say it was a purpose. I return to this subject because I would like to replace vision with purpose. NASA got a boost of energy – it was a meaningful mission! Except after when twenty people had been sent to the moon, the project was discontinued. However, having a human walk on another celestial body was terrific! 

A deeper meaning

Purpose concept. Meaning for us and the customers. Customers, staff, sales, production, R&D & A drawing of 3 people cheering.

Somehow having this deeper meaning is a fine thing. At Stradigo, we have for a long time used the sun as a metaphor for this. If the sun shines on us and our customers, it has meaning. And if we’re not excited about this meaning, we won’t know how to spread it to our customers either. That’s why we do things in this order: We come first, then the customers. 

The image above has sectors. How does the sun appear to the customers and our staff? How does the sun shine on sales and production, and so on? The sectors are gradually filled with many important things, and together they form the sun concept also known as the meaning sector. That’s why I think a deeper meaning is a crucial tool for differentiation. Many gold grains create a large, differentiating chunk of gold. 

The Purpose

Text: “Purpose = Mission + Vision”

The words mission and vision have meanings that are so close to each other that people easily confuse them together and get the meanings mixed up. People don’t know for sure what a company’s mission and vision are. They might remember one of the answers, but when the topic is discussed they actually aren’t sure if people are talking about the mission or the vision. So, why go through the trouble and possible hassle by using two words with very close meanings? Why not only use one word to describe both? Purpose is a great word because it actually combines what people refer to when they talk about mission and vision. 

Text in indigo colors: “The Purpose”. A drawing of a sun is placed above the text.

The purpose is how we help our customers and how we make the world a better place. It isn’t the easiest thing to define. At Stradigo, our customers’ current purposes have improved in every strategy project, because the strategy has been followed up more critically.  

Text: “The Purpose” and a drawing of two suns under the text. An arrow goes from one arrow to the other. The arrow represents a timespan of 3-5 years.

The great thing is that the sun is shining upon us already today. We have the meaning and the purpose already today. Three-five years into the future is where our state of vision is. What if it’s the same sun that shines only more brightly? Our purpose might have gotten deeper and stronger. If we have our mission today, and a deeper version of it as our vision, why use two different concepts? Especially when it’s so hard to guess the direction the world is going. Having a purpose makes people excited.  

Our purpose is permanent. It doesn’t change. If it does, then the business has changed. It might happen if competition in the old field has bulked up and no longer produces income. 

Towards a deeper purpose

Drawing of two suns, one smaller and one larger. An arrow going from the small to the larger sun. The arrow is described with the text: “Strategy”

Could we start thinking that our purpose already exists today, and strategy is what takes us towards a deeper purpose? This is a source of immense inspiration. That’s why I propose getting rid of the word vision. It’s impossible to know what the future brings, but the purpose might not change for a very long time.

Text in indigo colors: “The Purpose”. A drawing of a sun is placed above the text.

Get rid of vision and mission and replace them with a purpose! You can use whatever word you feel like, but aim or target aren’t good options because they are “out there somewhere”. The sun shines today! Significance is ok, but it isn’t active. Purpose is more powerful. 

Let’s make the world a better place with a purpose! And let’s be proud of it! We differentiate from our competitors with how our purpose spreads in the organization. It’s hard to copy! It creates a competitive advantage, a permanent one! Wow! 

Ignite your strategy! Read more.🔥 

Finding Us On Social Media

Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.

Categories
Strategic Planning

1.02 When is it worth updating the strategy?

When is it worth updating the strategy? — 1.02

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The company management or the entrepreneur doesn’t necessarily realize that its chosen strategy can cause a bad result. It is also possible that the company is making an ok yearly result. However, if the output is only ok, then it means there is tons of improvement. You want a winning outcome. Not having a winning result is, for practical purposes, an undesirable outcome. Everything depends on your chosen strategy. Let’s talk about updating the strategy. 

I have facilitated strategy processes in over a hundred companies over the years. My experiences have allowed me to identify, together with my colleagues’ various situations when companies choose to update their strategy. We have categorized these situations into three groups. Each group indicates an appropriate time to update the strategy.

When is the time to update the strategy?

Simple drawing of three persons. Headline: When to update the strategy. Force majeure. Lack of focus. No implementation.

 

The first group consists of force majeure situations. Some things must get done because there is no other way. According to the yearly clock, it might also be the right time to do it.

The second group consists of situations in which the company lacks focus. When the company operations are ongoing, the staff start to take on even more activities. Activities expand to the point that there are too many activities. When that happens, the management must bundle everything back together, and the staff needs a reminder of the core of the company’s activities. It is, of course, possible that the heart of the business develops over time, which also ends up affecting the various activities the staff engages in.

The third group includes situations in which the strategy is considered good, but implementation does not occur. Delays happen time and time again for various reasons.

Drawing. Headline: 1. Force Majeure. Bullet point list of situations related to Mergers & Acquisitions, Market Changes, and Finance and routines.

Mergers & Acquisitions

In situations where a company’s ownership changes, a fusion happens, or a company gets bought, the company leadership should create a new strategy.

A new CEO is always the one who will leave no stone unturned. Their job is to renew the company. A new organization is always the essential tool in strategy implementation. In practice, organizing happens intuitively. After that, the strategy gets crystallized with the new members of the staff. The plan is intuitively known, which means organizing happens first and strategy creation after that.

If the company owners wish to sell the company, they tend to desire to maximize its value. The investors ought to receive a presentation of a well-thought-out strategy.

Market changes 

A force majeure situation might also occur if the market changes dramatically. Competition might overtake us and steal our market share. Not good. In other instances, regulations (laws) may vary. If this happens, the company gets forced to think about how to proceed quickly (immediately for all practical purposes).

Finance and routines

The company can make a loss, which means the numbers are negative. If this happens, it means the company is looking at a turnaround case. If nothing gets done, money will eventually run out. Some typical solutions include downsizing and cutting down on expenses, which for many means layovers. Of course, that is not the only way, but it is a typical outcome when companies make a loss.

It’s also possible to be in a situation where the company has too much money in the bank. It needs to be invested in something or handed out to the owners as dividends, for example. Companies don’t have a purpose of being piggy banks. The money is either invested or put into better use somewhere else.

Then there is the very typical “Its spring, and it’s time to think!” -case. I’m very much against this routine-like way of operating, where last year’s slides and images get used all over again. Get a new grip! Forget last year’s presentation slides; come on!

A force majeure situation is clear. Everyone knows to stop and think.

Drawing. Headline: 2. More focus. Bullet point list of situations. Better competitiveness, more growth, and more excitement.

Better competitiveness. 

These are situations in which bloat has taken place and competitiveness has decreased. It would help if you did weeding, which allows the most vigorous and most desirable plants to thrive. Not all plants are equally desirable to have, but they take up valuable resources until we uproot them.

In some instances, there are many goals, and because of that, they have not gotten prioritized. In these situations, strong prioritizing is a good tool. Prioritizing is a central part of strategic planning.

The company’s strategic direction may have been in people’s heads for years. Even so, it is a strategy, and it can be brilliant and very agile. When the company grows, there comes the point where there are so many people, it is impossible to control the direction the company is heading. At this point, you need to write down your strategy.

More growth

More growth is needed when people aren’t satisfied with the situation. The growth isn’t sufficient enough. Why doesn’t the company offering please the customers? Houston, we have a problem.

Perhaps the company delivers too high-quality products and services. Operations work well, but for some reason, the competition, small start-ups, surpass with massive growth while the larger company stays in place. Too high quality can be a reason to update the strategy.

It is also possible that a new option arises. Perhaps it is decided that this new road is the one to follow. You never know what happens tomorrow; therefore, one must have the agility to update the strategy when necessary.

More excitement

Energy is something that might be lacking from the operation. The operation’s primary mission might be unclear, or we are too bureaucratic, and improvement just isn’t happening.

The atmosphere can be such that people no longer believe in the operation. Success is the biggest motivator, but if there is no success, a suspicion might arise that the business isn’t as good as people initially thought. That, of course, is the time to update the strategy.

Headline: 3. Problems with implementation. Bullet point list of situations. A gap in the strategy, slow renewal, customer-oriented approach.

In the third group, the strategy itself is good, but there are problems with the implementation.

The gap in the strategy 

Somehow a gap between the strategy and implementation has formed so that the strategy isn’t concrete.

It might be that the strategy has unrealistic goals, and people give up. It’s a great talent to balance goals on the right level of ambition. If the organization has a clear purpose, it helps boost people’s morale.

Of course, the company may have the wrong people for the situation. The market has changed, and now we need a new and a fresh way of thinking, new beliefs about how the business runs. When water runs through sand, it creates a gorge. The more we have poured “water” through our operation, the more we have started to believe in our victorious concept. And then, we end up losing.

Perhaps something changes; usually, it’s technology. New technology enables a new way of operating. That’s when a gap between the strategy and implementation exists. The strategy can be made as good as possible, but if the implementation gets done the old way, it doesn’t succeed; it doesn’t take flight! We must update our way of thinking.

Slow Renewal

Renewal may not happen sufficiently fast. We should gain an understanding of the future. The current way of selling and marketing is problematic. Digital marketing is not familiar, and people are skeptical. The reason might be about attitudes, the water gorge. People don’t dare to try and climb over the fence.

Most people feel that their comfort zone is safe. I belong to the school of thought, according to which only consistent, agile learning is safe. Still, water is dangerous! Interestingly, people think they’re safe in their comfort zone. They’re only lying to themselves; it’s the exact opposite. Few things are as dangerous as staying put. Opinions strengthen over time. People being to believe their bullshit. 

Customer-oriented approach

Implementation might be a problem because the customer-oriented approach isn’t in order. We all agree to be customer-oriented, but we don’t think about the customers during meetings; instead, we think about internal issues. Therefore, a customer-oriented approach is not in the culture. Even if it were on paper, it’s not enough.

One must be able to offer the customers something new. The new thing must be something the pioneers would accept. If you ask conservative customers what they want and begin implementing their wishes, you might as well stick your feet in cement shoes. One should ask the pioneering customers. If they think this new thing is good, the rest of the gang will follow later.

However, one doesn’t need to be dumb and sell something too new. One needs to have something for the more conservative, something that has already gotten proven to a certain extent. Some may say that customers are traditional. That’s why the most conservative part of a company is sales because it converses with conservative customers. It doesn’t have to be like that! We’ve seen it many times.

It can be that the digital aspect is lacking. It is pretty challenging. I have studied it for ten years and invested a lot of money in trying to understand it. I’m very intrigued by what digital technology has to offer us.

When to update the strategy? Force majeure, focus, implementation. Three drawings of people.

Let’s wrap things up: When is the time to update the strategy?

When in a hurry and a force majeure situation. Such a situation is among the easiest to work from because everyone understands it’s about the strategy.

An update should occur once operations have broken into too many directions. What is the core focus today? That’s worthy of considering.

A strategy is good only if implementation takes place. It doesn’t take a lot for implementation efforts to stop. Is it possible for the strategy to have a bug? Perhaps it’s time to look at the whole execution with new eyes.

Ignite your strategy by updating it at the right moment! Read more.🔥

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Stradigo

Stradigo is a management consultancy that helps business owners outsmart the competition by discovering blind spots and facilitating the creation of winning strategies.

Categories
Customer Strategy

5.01 Understanding The Customer In-Depth

Understanding the Customer In-Depth — 5.01

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This blog will focus on understanding customers in-depth, and what it takes. In our book, we differentiate between customer orientation and understanding the customer in-depth. This blog explains how they differ from each other.

Drawing of two people standing beside each other. One wears blue clothes the other one wear green.

Customer perspective?

Let’s think about the term customer focus. What is it exactly? It’s a good term, and it means that we focus on the customer, like if we observe something with binoculars or through a magnifying glass. The key is to have the correct type of focus that fits your situation. Your situation brings requirements, and they need consideration. You may think this feels trivial, but it is very tough to make an organization understand the customer on a deep level in my experience.

Customer perspective inside-out

Very often, the organization puts focus on delivering a particular product or service to the customer. It is an inside-out approach, which is not a customer-focused approach. There’s another way to do this.

Customer perspective outside-in

Customer perspective outside-in

Here is an example of the alternative way that we think is the better way to this. What if it was possible to get access to information the customer sees the situation? Documentation is the bridge that allows us to achieve a deep level of customer understanding. We have analyzed the customer to such an extent that we have produced written material about it. Let’s think about your business for a bit. How much documentation do you have about your products? How much documentation do you have about your customer? Is the ratio a 50-50 split? Perhaps 30-60, or 10-90?

The goal you should aim for (in our opinion) is to conduct your business from an outside-in perspective. Take time to think about how the things you do genuinely help your customer? What is the Purpose of your activities? How does everything translate into practice? How do you turn everything into a great offer that is highly beneficial for your customer?

Internal processes

Flowchart representing process thinking with the aim of reaching a target group.

Let me tell you how I arrived at these conclusions. Here’s the story. The business world invented process thinking in the mid-’80s, which was a huge sensation at the time. Before process thinking came about, everything was about operations. We had sales, product development, and production, and everything took place in-house. The management did not group people into silos, nor did anyone think about how the operative work flowed to the corporation’s customer.

Then the business world invented the term target group. The target group is a term that represents this way of thinking very well, the paradigm, if you will. Target groups, as a term, describe this way of thinking so well that it inherits the flaws of the paradigm. You can see it as a soft spot. One of the weaknesses is that the customer gets seen as a target! It’s a bit like looking at the customer through a hunting rifle scope while aiming at the customer’s forehead. People are not game to be hunted. If you think of people like this, then you should seriously re-evaluate how you perceive reality. 

When intelligent people drew this whole chain of thought into a single coherent picture, people realized how things worked in the organization. People also saw the things that weren’t working because they were now plainly visible on paper. People marked the problems with red flags, and then they began fixing the issues. However, there was still one big mistake in this thinking process. The other side is missing. What side, you ask? The customer’s side.

The Zipper model – Two processes meet

A simplified drawing of a zipper. The zipper represents how two models meet.

A new realization took place in the mid-’90s. There were two processes! The other side of the process became known as the customer’s side. Intelligent people connected these two processes like the zipper in a Ziplock. During this time, I was pioneering and created the zipper model. Let’s look at this model in greater detail. Here is the zipper model:

The Zipper model. The model represents how the customer and organization connect with each other through specific touch points.

As you can see, it takes our and our customer’s processes into account. The process steps get paired. They connect at specific meeting points, also known as touchpoints. I have created zipper models for clients hundreds of times over the years. This model has continuously improved over the years by becoming ever more hands-on and straightforward. Simplification is at the very heart of the Stradigo brand, our way of doing.

It’s a joy to see how fast we can pull the information from the professionals’ heads.

Usually, this process begins with the customer defining their goals, and we try to make them aware. We do this so the customer would understand we can help them realize these goals. If the company likes the approach, we can start building the zipper. By creating the zipper, the customer’s business improves.

When the customer’s process gets drawn as a zipper model, the challenge becomes how to focus on the right things. Customer processes can get drawn out as very vast chains. However, it is impossible to serve the entire customer process from start to finish. The purpose of a business is not to do everything, and it cannot do it. Very few companies could feasibly even attempt to serve everything. It takes too much money, effort, and business size to be a realistic prospect for most. That is why an organization strives to respond to and solve a specific part of the customer’s process. 

Text: Worry – Need = Solution. The difference between a worry and a need is a solution.

Worry — Need = Solution

Here is something fun to think about: What is the difference between a worry and a need? I realized that these two words are the opposite sides of the same coin. They address the same phenomenon. I’m sure I have given hundreds of presentations about this, asking people to think about the difference between these two words. Many good answers exist, but one, in particular, is particularly helpful: A Need is an answer to a worry.

Here’s an example. If I’m thirsty, thirst is my worry. But what is my need? What is the answer to thirst? It could be an ice-cold beer or a glass of water.

Every salesperson has an inherent desire to make the customer happy and satisfied. Salespeople think with their common sense and conclude that the customer’s needs must be satisfied. How does one get to know the customer’s needs? Once again, the salespeople begin to think with their common sense. LET’S ASK THE CUSTOMER!

At that very moment, people don’t notice that they are delegating the responsibility and competence to answer the client. Because the need is the answer, the customer’s know-how and capability to answer limit what they can tell you at any given time. The salesperson likely is far more competent to provide an answer than the customer.

We have concluded that instead of asking about the customer’s needs, we must listen to their worries. Then, the salesperson takes responsibility and presents the potential customer with something that solves the concern, which may interest them.

If the customer knows their needs, they are often a bit old-fashioned. They don’t know about our newest tricks. That’s when you can say:

“Sure! We can do things that way, but you might be interested in this. This is our new way of doing that.”.

Then the customer becomes interested and wants to know more about the solution you mentioned.

Customer’s worry – Your solution

Take responsibility for the customer’s needs! A worry hides a question. If you want to be an expert, this is what you do: Every time a customer asks you about anything, you immediately, after a meeting, try to figure out a way to solve that worry. You could present them with a sales pitch that provides an answer to that worry. By refining the pitch, you end up with something that doesn’t even look like a pitch. It behaves like a meeting where you help solve the customer’s worry. They worry; you have a solution to it. If you match, an opportunity to work together presents itself. The fewer questions the engaged potential customer has to ask you, the better your presentation is. You keep refining your presentation until you don’t get questions.

Customer Situations

Customer Situations

Here comes the important thing with the zipper. The approach is something that can be considered new. We hadn’t realized it back in the 1990s. I think this is solid. The point is this. When the customer goes through their process, they regularly bump into situations where they realize they could use help. They stop and either try to work things out by themselves or ask for help from a professional. Solving things by themselves takes however long it takes and gives them the quality that matches their current know-how. The result can be much worse than what a professional could achieve, yet the Dunning-Kruger effect or some other reason may compel them to do it by themselves. Just because the customer can do something a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the optimal decision.

When these situations get identified, the customer’s process crystallizes and simplifies. We have identified many problem situations while interacting with our customers, and I can say as of this moment that there seem to be around 15 situations. When we know what they are, we give them a name.

Situation — Worry

Text: “Situation. Worry, worry, worry.” Yellow explosion. Person in green shirt.

The customer is sweating when they have loads of worries in one situation. We, however, have been hearing these same worries year after year. I always joke about pulling these worries and situations out of the customers’ heads with tongs.

A professional has met many customers and heard many worries. The professional knows these worries better than the customer because they have met many people going through the same situations.

It might be the first time the customer is running into this situation. So, how would they know all the answers to this situation if it is their first time? They will identify a few questions immediately, but the professional might know 30 more worries waiting behind the corner. Identifying these situations is very important and helpful! Because then the salesperson can offer a better solution to the potential customer’s problem!

Understanding the customer in-depth

Four steps. Customer process, situations, concerns, solutions. Three persons cheering about the four steps.

The logic is the same for the whole process as a simplified version. Back in the old days, we used to hold five full-day workshops to create the Zipper model. Now we can do the whole thing in a fraction of that time. Logically, we always begin with the customer’s process. Once drawn into a picture, situations get identified and appropriately assigned to the correct spot in the process.

It’s tough to get the staff to jump into a customer’s situation. They always return to their side of the process and begin to think about what their goals are. That’s when I say: Forget about your world for once!

Jump into our customer’s shoes and begin to think about what the situations are. It’s not easy at all to give them names. It’s pretty demanding but doable when editing comes into the picture. When the situation is clear, it is possible to think about the worries. A professional can easily help to identify 10-30 worries per situation.

When you have identified the worries, choose one of the solutions and think of a situation that it applies in. When there are many situations, the solutions form a puzzle. The customer might be lacking one piece of the puzzle, and that’s why they aren’t able to get the complete picture of their situation. As professionals, we can help them out.

Customer Situations

customer situationsCustomer Situations

Speaking from experience, I can say that one Zipper workshop can deal with as many as 200 worries. During the workshop, customers (who participate in the workshop!) get asked if they recognize these worries. Every single time they answer: “Yes, that is our world.”

Professionals know a great deal about the customer’s world. Still, when the situation gets visualized with pictures, the customer realizes they can’t handle it alone, and they ask a professional for help. And when you understand the customer in-depth, you are the professional.

Understanding the customer in-depth

Understanding the customer in-depth

Even the best professionals will have trouble addressing things they have never thought of before. A lack of awareness causes issues for the professional. Nobody can throw out 30 worries on a whim. When the worries related to the various situations get drawn into a clear image, the salesperson can talk about them to a prospective client and demonstrate that they can help the prospective client solve the various issues.

Sales take place once both parties agree to do something. To get deals, you must be able to demonstrate you can provide a concrete solution. If you work from the zipper model, you will have a powerful tool at your disposal. Thanks to this fact, I strongly encourage you to build a zipper model for yourself. If you want help with this, feel free to reach out to us. We are more than happy to help you build one as fast as possible. It’s a faster way to results than doing the R&D on your own.

Understanding the customer in-depth is the key to success!

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Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.

Categories
Typical Mistakes

4.01 The Biggest Mistakes in the Strategy Process — Mistake 1: Not involving people

The Biggest Mistakes in the Strategy Process — Mistake 1: Not Involving People | 4.01

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This is the first blog of three to address the biggest mistakes that can happen during a strategy process. Today, I will be introducing the cardinal mistake in a strategy process, the lack of involvement.

Strategy framework that describes the Stradigo strategy process. The process includes three phases; 1. Direct, 2. Prioritize, 3. Act.

Three loops

This model that describes the strategy process consists of three rotating loops. The management directs the company in the first loop, which means strategic decisions, and implementation follow-up takes place quarterly. The second loop is where everyday leadership activities take place. People identify sub-goals, and implementation follow-up takes place weekly. People lead themselves for the most part during this loop. The third loop consists of everyday operative work, and it constantly rotates in every company. 
The deciding skill is how to connect these three loops. But when trying to link them together, various types of problems may arise.

Mistake 1: Lack of involvement

The first great mistake and the cardinal mistake in a strategy process is to not. involve people in the thinking process. People can be efficiently involved today because technology makes this very easy, convenient, and efficient. The traditional way would be far more expensive, so it is not common to invite the whole organization to participate. The old way is outdated, and you should seriously consider updating your assumptions about what it means to involve people in the strategy process. The default answer is that you should include everyone because it is possible to do it very efficiently.

Lack of exitement

Drawing of a group of five men being excited and cheering near a large group of people who are not excited.

The staff lacks excitement because the management hasn’t involved them in the strategy process.

In the old world, the management sits down in a conference room and thinks about the company strategy. After a long and arduous negotiation, they finally decide the strategy and are excited that it is ready. A press conference is held, which the staff is happy to attend. Even so, in the end, the employees can have unanswered questions. They can also be confused about what it all means for them in practice. 

If you desire to hold a formal briefing for the staff, you encounter a few problems:

Group of five people being excited and cheering near a large unexcited group. Red Text: 1. Explaining, 2. Selling the idea, 3. Forcing people to converse.e management doesn't involve people

When the management doesn’t involve the staff they will have to explain the strategy, sell the idea, and force people to talk about their idea.

You need to explain to people what the strategy is to sell them the idea. They either will or won’t buy what you present. How can you get them to understand? One CEO came up with the worst words in Finnish that I have ever heard — Keskusteluttaminen. In Finnish, it means something like forcing people to converse. To put it bluntly: “Make those idiots converse so that they would finally understand what’s going on.”

STOP!
Group of five people cheering excited & cheering near a large unexcited group. Drawing covered by a large indigo x.

Stop! Don’t do it like how I explained above. Involve your staff!

Instead, see your strategy process as a genuinely fantastic opportunity to have people think genuinely together!

Let's work genuinely together!

Drawing of a strategy process with multiple boxes that describe how all staff can be involved in the process and work authentically together.

Let’s work genuinely together! Involve all staff and reap the rewards. Everybody wins.

First, a one-hour kickoff takes place with everybody present. People are all asked questions about topics like growth and problematic issues. Next, come the workshops. Thanks to technology, workshops can be held with a larger group. People get asked to volunteer themselves.

After the workshops, the partly done, unfinished, strategy gets previewed to the entire staff, and they have the opportunity to give feedback and share their opinions. At the very end, the organization holds the finalization workshops, and the final output gets shown to the entire staff.

Thanks to the fact that people can take part from the very beginning, minimal persuasion needs to occur. Everybody had the opportunity to steer the process. Strategy implementation began during the kickoff meeting. By the time the strategy process completes, somebody in the organization may already have started using some ideas in practice. 

Avoid the cardinal mistake in your strategy process!

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Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.

Categories
Strategy Implementation

3.01 The Presence Of Strategy In Everyday Business

The presence of strategy in daily work — 3.01

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Many organizations experience problems with the strategy becoming present in everyday business. You see, when you create the strategy, it easily remains hidden somewhere out of sight, and nobody looks at it until the next time the strategy is updated. A present strategy is what you need.

Three loops

Strategy framework with 3 loops. Direct, Prioritize, Act. This framework is used by Stradigo.

This is an image of three loops from the strategy journey.

Here is, once again, our strategy model with three loops. In the first loop, we direct the company and find a direction we think will bring us success. In the second loop, we start steering the strategy implementation.  Big goals get broken down into subgoals, which the management prioritizes. When goals are defined, we proceed to loop three, everyday operative work.

The link connecting the first and second loop often breaks. It’s one of the reasons why organizations fail to implement their strategy. If you want to ignite your company’s strategy, make the loops rotate and keep them linked.

Summarizing everything on a single page

This is a drawing describing how a Strategy 1Pager is created by summarizing information and how it continues into implementation.

The key with creating a Strategy 1Pager is to summarize everything to a single page.

The strategy crystallizes from many ideas. The unique thing about our work process is that we hold strategy meetings with the whole staff, where everyone is allowed to give comments. Meetings take place at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the strategy process. Workshops occur with expanded group composition.

A significant number of ideas are gathered, refined, and prioritized. In the end, the strategy gets crystallized onto a single page, Strategy 1Pager. Then the implementation process begins.

Strategy 1Pager

In this drawing five people look at a Strategy 1Pager. The 1Pager includes a sector, a sun and an indigo arrow pointing at the sun.

Meetings, meetings...

This is a drawing of five groups of people meeting around five different tables. In the centermost table one person is pointing at a large screen.

Several meetings take place in companies. The question is, is the strategy present in the meeting agendas? Unfortunately, I suspect that it is not actively present in that many meetings.

Operative tasks eat up the time

Operative matters quickly eat up all the time that people have reserved for thinking about the strategy. In another blog, I told you that important and urgent issues compete against each other. In this competition, urgent matters always win.

The talent is to have the strategic goals present during the meetings. How is it done in practice? There are better and worse solutions to that; however, I’ll explain one excellent approach and a new possibility for you.

How you lead and follow up progress

This is a drawing of five people looking at a dashboard of goals. The goals are marked with red, yellow and green dots.

Use a digital board. Track progress through it.

Let’s move the strategy onto a digital board! Everybody can see the whole strategy and write comments onto cards, which get grouped according to goals. When your big goals are present on the board and separated into specific tasks, traffic lights show how strategy implementation progresses.

When the essential tasks are listed, staff can notice that one or several goals may no longer be optimal. Goals and tasks can influence each other, which creates an interesting dynamic. This dynamic between goals and tasks is a component of agile leadership, a living strategy. Staff can also notice quite fast if the goals have been completed. Once complete, the team can fill the void with new the following objectives.

The point is in how people lead themselves and follow up on the work. Is the work in sync with the strategy? When we have a digital board, it affects our work. The media is the message! When the board makes the things we pursue visible for us, we go towards our goals much more efficiently. This way the strategy becomes present.

The Purpose

This is a drawing of five people looking at a dashboard of goals. The goals are marked with red, yellow and green dots.

Every business needs to have a Purpose, the sun, for it to exist. Some have written it down; others have not. The purpose is not only about earning money for the shareholders – even though it is essential. But we make more when the purpose is an answer to what you do for our customers.

If you involve the customer in this purpose, you suddenly earn more money for the shareholders. You get better success because you think outside-in instead of pushing out products from an inside-out perspective. That’s why the purpose must be visible on the strategy page.

A strategy implements the purpose. It helps you to implement it more efficiently for your customers. In the end, the strategy can be just a few sentences long—an elevator pitch.

The strategy consists of focus areas. What are the areas that need focus? These focus areas are written down clearly in the strategy. The next thing is identifying the big goals. There can’t be too many focus areas; three or four is often the right amount. Otherwise, your attention gets split on too many things, and nothing gets finished in time.

To reiterate the marmalade phenomenon: Every organization has a spoonful of marmalade and a certain number of toasts to butter. The management can’t pick too many toast pieces; otherwise, you won’t taste the marmalade.

In a large corporation, two focus areas can be too few, but five can be too many. In a smaller company, two or even one focus area can be enough. If a storm erupts, focus areas need prioritization. The company reduces the number of things receiving focus. In that situation, a big company might have only two focus areas. Storms can come from black swan events (unexpected events), like a global pandemic.

Goals and targets

This is a hierarchy of multiple levels. From top to bottom. Purpose, Strategy, Focus Areas, Goals & Actions. The words are connected by red arrows.

It’s very vital that your company has a way to prioritize things, a hierarchy if you will.

It isn’t easy to implement a strategy if one merely goes with the flow and invents goals out of thin air. When the whole staff is involved in the strategy process, critical operative thinking always happens. The strategy and the focus areas get seen as high-quality ideas.

Without a satellite perspective, the ideas according to which the company operates lack sufficient perspective, in my opinion.

If you don’t understand your purpose for the customers, you don’t necessarily focus your energy on the most important things. If you only think about operative goals and tasks, you’re arranging deck chairs on the Titanic a few moments before the ship hits the iceberg. You also have to examine the road into the future.

Helicopter perspective

During the five-day war in Kuwait, general Schwarzkopf held daily press conferences. He said that it’s possible to make good decisions from the grassroots perspective; however, when one rises to the helicopter level, “then you know what to do.”

We can use Schwartzkopf’s approach as a good example. An organization, with a clear upper-level view, defines better goals for itself. Even in a one-person micro-enterprise, it’s beneficial to understand what should receive focus!

In smaller companies, the focus areas might often change, even every couple of months. The implementation of the focus areas takes longer in larger companies. They complete more comprehensive strategy rounds now and then. After that, it’s perfectly acceptable to look at the strategy quarterly. How is it doing, and has it progressed?

Safe stability is gone

These days companies need people to think about the most critical topics more frequently and faster. To those who believe that their industry isn’t changing rapidly, I say good luck. I’m afraid the time of safe stability is gone. One of the few safe things a company can do is stay constantly alert and sense what customers need. React immediately to sudden changes.

Following the big picture: trends and competition, etc.

The company staff must follow up the strategy implementation constantly.

You need continuous follow-up

A series of meetings is called a management system. The management system provides answers to various questions. What kind of meetings? What are the themes and mission of each session? How often are meetings held? What is the meeting agenda? What are things measured during the meeting?

Take a look at your management system and follow up on implementation progression progress now and then. During bad times if you don’t reach the goals, the management system meetings are held more frequently. A loose follow-up can lead to an inefficient way of working. Inefficiency can cause you not to reach the goals you’ve set out for yourself. That’s why it’s imperative to lead the strategy through the organization.

Leadership inside the organization

This is a drawing of five groups of people meeting around five different tables. A person is pointing at a large screen. Red arrows connect the groups.

Look at the above image. Let’s pretend the management group is in the middle. It follows up on upper-level goals, but, in the meantime, every team in the organization has also interpreted what those high-level goals mean to them personally.

Now comes the trick. Everyone can, and should, have access to a digital board of their own, which links to the other boards through an internal logic. The goals and tasks are easily made visible on the board. Through this approach, the company ensures that the upper-level goals are, within reason, broken down into subgoals.

Some time ago, I was facilitating the strategy creation process in a large corporation. The process took place over multiple days. On the second day, the idea was to set goals for the fourth quarter, but suddenly the conversation changed the process agenda and gave birth to a new Strategy 1Pager. And that’s what we did. The strategy didn’t change, but we noticed the focus areas needed to be updated.

Bottom up!

Together we defined the new big focus areas and created everything from the bottom up. We browsed through the essential topics. The most critical matters passed the filter. As a result, the Strategy 1Pager contents changed. In retrospect, a person could think we made an extensive strategy round, but we only ended up changing the focus areas.

Even though the corporation in question is a billion-dollar company, it’s beginning to be quite agile. Agility has developed over several years. Decisions aren’t carved in stone. When we modified the 1Pager, we merely documented the new situation! It was a surprise to everyone; it wasn’t the plan to even make a new one-page strategy. The strategy stayed the same even if the focus areas changed.

Every team has a separate function. The important thing is how the teams begin to implement them.

Today's point: Continuous Prioritization

This is a drawing of a sector with black borders. Inside the sector is an indigo-colored pointed arrow that leads towards a sun outside the sector.

The point of the day is constantly prioritizing by using a digital board.  Strategy becomes present in everyday life—staff sails within the sector defined by the chosen strategy. Every day staff senses from which direction the wind blows. Sensing like this enables everyone to act with agility.

The Purpose gives the staff and customers energy. People get inspired when actions align with the purpose. The team goes along because everybody works towards a great thing. A great purpose means customers get help. Customers are thrilled when they can access the expertise they need.

If you want the strategy to be present in your everyday life, you must prioritize constantly. The strategy must be part of the meeting agenda in the weekly meetings! It may sound overwhelming, but it’s not. You only need one board, in which the strategy is visible all the time!

Do this correctly, and your strategy will become present and steer your daily activities!

Ignite your strategy! Read more.🔥

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Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.

Categories
Strategic Leadership

2.02 Kickstarting strategy implementation

Kickstarting strategy implementation — 2.02

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Once the strategy is ready, how does the organization kickstart the strategy implementation?

Strategy framework with 3 loops. Direct, Prioritize, Act. This framework is used by Stradigo.

I’m excited about the above strategy model! It’s simple, and it shows the journey clearly from a helicopter perspective.

Kickstarting strategy implementation: The Three Loops

In the first loop, the company’s direction becomes defined. Everyone receives an invite to join the creation process. People challenge their assumptions and the prevailing thinking inside the company. Tough choices get made, and, in the end, the whole strategy becomes visible on a single page. We call this one-page strategy a Strategy 1Pager.

Let’s take a look at the second loop, prioritize. That’s when the company steers itself through strategy implementation. Don’t expect things to get going by themselves. The management has to kickstart implementation. The ideas written down on the Strategy 1Pager, are often high-quality ideas. That’s why sub-goals, prioritization, and resourcing are essential. People are given responsibilities for specific tasks to steer the implementation and to follow up on their progress. The second loop needs to rotate weekly, which is much faster than the first loop. The first loop rotates quarterly. The second loop is all about following up on the goals.

The third loop represents everyday work. If the company runs into unsolvable problems inside the third loop, it typically occurs inside the second loop. If the problem, for some reason, can’t be solved inside the second loop, then the issue gets addressed inside the first loop. 

Text that reads “From PowerPoint to a living digital board.”

PowerPoint vs. Digital board

The strategy, typically, is presented as a PowerPoint slideshow. By doing this, the aim becomes to deliver the strategy in a clear form. Unfortunately, PowerPoint slides are static, which means they don’t function as a living document. Companies can make the strategy alive by setting up a digital board that tracks implementation. Whiteboards with sticky notes can work, but this approach is location restricted. A living digital board with cards and columns avoids issues caused by on-location challenges and the analog nature of pen and paper. You can feasibly use any software out there that you like. At Stradigo, we prefer to go with either Trello or Planner because they are popular. People are familiar with them. Familiarity is useful.

Digital boards have a use as a strategy steering tool. Prioritization becomes very straightforward. Free software, like Trello, give us all the functionality that we require to benefit in practice. I recommend some of the many free alternatives. The base functionality is the same in most digital board software out there. If your organization already uses a specific IT ecosystem, then you may already have software in mind.

The significant reason to use a digital board is to have a shared surface everybody can write on simultaneously. It becomes a platform for the company where each column on the board represents one focus area.

A whiteboard with three columns and cards. The cards have green, yellow and red dots. Each column is titled as a goal. Five people look at the board.

See how the strategy implementation becomes reality

The idea of using a digital board is to have a common platform where everybody can write at the same time. Each column on the board makes up a single focus area. Each card on the board, inside the columns, represents a specific task, a bit like sticky notes on a whiteboard. This truly helps with kickstarting the strategy implementation.

When the company prioritizes actions, it acquires clarity about implementation needs and what order things must occur. Thanks to this, the strategy remains relevant and active in front of everyone’s eyes without pause. An agile strategy has been born. Follow-up the strategy implementation frequently, for example, through weekly or bi-weekly meetings. Frequent follow-up creates a bridge between the plan and operative work. The entire organization sees the same board and acts on it.

The shared digital board is visible to the whole organization, allowing everybody to see how the strategy implementation becomes a reality. Deploying this type of setup is an opportunity for every organization, no matter what size it is.

An interesting phenomenon also happens. When the strategy is on a digital board, it starts to live. It remains up-to-date because the staff updates it almost every week. Likewise, the focus areas live with the times and adapt to suit the needs of the organization. I’m not talking about minor things but significant focus areas—the type of focus areas visible in the strategy, significant decisions. Nowadays, I believe that a company shouldn’t have four focus areas because that is too much to handle. Three would be the optimum number so that that focus won’t split between too many places.

The Marmalade Phenomenon

Drawing of a spoon with marmalade, five sheets and a smiling face.

I have spoken earlier about the marmalade phenomenon, which, in my opinion, is the best piece of advice for leaders. It goes like this. Every organization has a tablespoon worth of marmalade, representing resources, capabilities, machines, IT, staff, etc. The management must choose the right amount of toasts to use it on. Not too many and not too few. After that, the spoonful of marmalade gets spread onto the chosen number of toasts. For example, if there are 31 pieces of toast (big tasks), there’s not enough marmalade for them all, and so the toasts taste only like dough. If that happens, people start to demand more resources. Whenever I tell this story, I follow it up with a harsh comment:

“You have the exact amount of resources you are worth! You need to know how to choose and prioritize!”

The amount of money coming in determines the number of available resources. The question is how you use your available resources. If you lead badly, you butter too many toasts. What is the right amount of toasts? That is the question.

During the strategy journey, a risk exists that the three loops of the strategy journey can detach. I have covered the strategy loops in greater detail in separate blog entries. The organization may store the strategic plan inside a PowerPoint file, where it remains forgotten until it a review takes place a year later. If the strategic plan is in a digital board form, the second loop will rotate weekly, and the strategy remains living. The necessary actions, the tasks, are constantly present and visible in front of all staff members. This is how you kickstart the strategy implementation!

The strategy ignites, and a successful journey begins! Read more.🔥
Drawing of a campfire.

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Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.

Categories
Strategic Planning

1.01 A Successful Strategy is a Journey

A Successful Strategy is a Journey — 1.01

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Welcome to the first blog! This blog is part of a series that will center on a concept I call the Strategy Journey and the experiences I have had with it over the years. 

Strategic planning

Strategic Planning is a challenging process. First, it is pretty hard to understand the strategy and how it helps the company grow and be profitable. Plus, it is not enough to have a strategic plan; you also need to implement it. Strategy implementation can be even more challenging than strategic planning. Without successful execution, strategic planning will not bring about practical benefits.

Strategy framework that describes the Stradigo strategy process. The process includes three phases; 1. Direct, 2. Prioritize, 3. Act.

The above model is new, and we have titled it the Strategy Journey. We developed the model because some perceive strategy as a word that is hard to understand, almost like rocket science, or very abstract.

We think that is not the case. Once the company has written a strategic plan, the strategy is simple to understand. The terminology (strategy) causes problems for some people. It can be hard to understand. We have tried to replace it with some other word that is easier to understand. Strategy is an established word.

So, what is a strategy? The shortest and most straightforward explanation we have is this:

Strategy is HOW

How do you launch yourself into the future? What is the Strategy Journey?

Strategy is a journey

Strategy is a journey. And one must keep upgrading it regularly. I had an epiphany while attending a conference in Nashville, Tennessee. He woke up at four in the morning because of jetlag and got to work. He made a realization. Strategy updates do not need to take place once a year in the form of an annual cycle. Instead, we can visualize everything as a Strategy Journey that consists of three parallel streams. Each stream is like a loop that revolves at a different speed compared to the other two.

We call the first loop Direct (We Direct), which is also known as strategic planning. During this loop, the business directs its operations towards the desired future. We use “we” because people in the business work together with the help of technology. Technology allows companies to do strategic planning efficiently, even when involving many people.

The three loops of the strategy process

The first loop needs to revolve in every business, and if the strategy is only updated once a year, then the speed is often too slow. Most firms need to do a review far more frequently. Quarterly reviews may be much more suitable for many companies. Once done with the planning, the company continues to phase two, Prioritize (We Prioritize). Big goals need to be adjusted. The organization must ramp up the implementation efforts. In this case, ramp-up means systematic follow-up of the implementation. The organization adapts its priorities, activities and follows-up performance weekly.

The daily activity takes place inside the third loop, Act (We Act). Once you have your new strategic plan, you quickly get stuck in this phase. When this happens, companies forget about the strategic plan. It falls into the background. Everyone goes with the flow weekly and daily. Going with the flow can work for a time, but often people drop to the floor when they lose touch with the core idea behind the strategy.

All three loops need to be linked together

The point of the Strategy Journey is that all three loops are linked together. Goals come out of the first loop and are compressed and concretized in the second loop. A big mistake you can make is not to keep them linked. Once your strategic plan becomes a PowerPoint presentation, a gap typically forms between your strategy and implementation.

For a long time, we have used the sun as our symbol to describe the Purpose of a client. It is the big benefit the customers receive that, in a sense, is the reason for the company’s existence. The company is not just earning money for business owners. Of course, making money is essential; otherwise, a business owner wouldn’t risk his capital in a risky business. But, if the idea is that we are helping clients, they are pleased and pay compensation for the work, of course. The more we help our clients, the more they are ready to pay compensation for the help they get.

The sun shines upon the whole system and is already in existence today. The Purpose is not some futuristic vision somewhere. It shines both today and tomorrow. In the future, it shines even more profoundly and vibrantly because the business has improved itself.

Phase 1. Direct of Stradigo’s strategy process framework. Quarterly rotation. Invite all, challenge, make selections, and crystallize.

The Direct phase in a nutshell

We intend to go through all phases one by one. Let us start from We Direct. It is a traditional strategic planning process. Let us say the process runs and is ongoing, usually during spring. Everybody is ecstatic at the end of the process! The company management is pleased that they have finally completed a complicated thing, so they hold a briefing for the entire staff.

The Staff Briefing

The CEO of the company explains everything in an hour-long session. When he has finished and showed multiple slides on PowerPoint, it is time for questions. There is always one hand that rises, and the person poses the same question:

“What does this mean in practice?”

Then the CEO should be able to explain what the upper-level idea behind the strategic plan is in practice. Well, he has an answer. Still, most staff are present, and they ask what this all means for their work. It is not the CEO’s job to know. Sometimes I say that the correct answer to that question (which the CEO technically should give but usually does not dare to say…) is:

“Listen, friend, the reason I have hired you is to figure out what this means for your work. I cannot do your work for you! I am trying to figure out my work. Take care of your part.”

… But that is not how it goes. The CEO has to say something concrete.

‘We direct’ means that we decide a sector based on what the sun directs us to do. We sail within the sector every week and month and figure out the best course for today.

Some points why to involve everyone in the strategy process

We have listed four points that have developed through my experiences  in this field.

The first point is that you get a significant effect on this process if you invite everybody to participate in the strategy journey from the very beginning. In the old world, this is a radical thing to suggest. In that world, the managers decide the strategy. Inviting others does not happen.

The given reasons are:

A.) They do not understand

B.) It is too expensive to include everybody

Both reasons are myths. They are busted.

A.) They understand the high-level idea

B.) It’s no longer expensive to include everybody in the process and to hold a large online meeting. All thanks to technology!

How the workshops look like in practice

My record is 157 people in a single workshop. With Zoom, I could divide people into 50 breakout rooms. Then we ask them to give written feedback. With good facilitation, this is truly a quick process. The whole process took only three weeks. Everyone participated, and the CEO of the company was astounded at the efficiency. Usually, in larger organizations, it can take up to six weeks. The speed of the process is not defined by a third-party facilitator but by their schedules. Their calendars define how much time they can afford to put into operative work.

A workshop once a week is ok, but no more workshops that last a full day or even two full days. Instead, have a three-hour workshop with the whole group: One-hour kickoff and two hours of hard work.

Invite everyone to take part in the strategy process to save money

Invite everyone because it is not as expensive as persuading everyone to commit to a strategy created inside a board room in isolation. The attempt is unlikely to succeed, and failure means wasted time, which translates to lost money. When people have been participating in strategic planning from the beginning, they understand it. And then an interesting phenomenon happens. These people are beginning to experience that it is their strategy.

”We weren’t taking part in the CEO’s process; we did this genuinely together, and we own this result!”

On an emotional level, it’s pretty terrific! Young people are so excited that they get to witness the creation of the strategy, and they learn how to direct, prioritize and act it out!

Challenging beliefs and myths

During the process, one must be able to challenge one’s beliefs and myths. The new CEO is often good at it because they see everything with a fresh eye and begin questioning things. An experienced third-party facilitator can be valuable because they are not in the circle playing the political game of resources and work positions. They can ask simple, but killer questions and can share their knowledge and experience with other organizations.

As I write this, I’m in my 91st strategy process facilitation. Every process teaches you something! If you’re doing this for the first or third time, I can say that they are small things. How does one make a group think and pull out the information from their heads? Usually, extroverts steal airtime. But even though an introvert won’t fight for their turn to speak and doesn’t necessarily enjoy performing, they might have written down the best idea in the crowd. We must be able to step outside the box. Good questions bring a lot of value, and they can profoundly affect the outcome of the entire strategy process. The company must, of course, analyze the outside world and see where the trends lie. From there, we pick and choose and make big decisions. Once we have made all these decisions at the very end, they are all compressed into a one-page strategy (essential).

Prioritize

Phase 2. Prioritize of Stradigo’s strategy process framework. Weekly. Next (sub-)goals, prioritization, resourcing, follow-up.

Now we go into the second phase of the strategy process, Prioritize. The strategy is ready as a one-page strategy, the Strategy 1Pager. During creation, tough decisions have likely occurred, and focus areas have crystallized. Now the focus areas need to be specified into sub-goals and be prioritized. Who is responsible for what? Another decision relates to presentation. Should the strategy be written on a slide or documented on a digital board? Slides are static, while everyone can easily access digital boards. If the plan is on a digital board, the business strategy becomes a living document. 

Act

Act daily

Next, we look at everyday work, which is loop 3. Rotation takes place inside every business. The question is, do we work in an old manner? There has been a good way of doing things. Have we benefited from technology and understood that there would be a much more efficient way to do it.

Customer journey means we analyze our customer’s value-creating process and their way of providing value to their customers. Do we understand their way of working, the process, and do we know the situations they encounter? Situations where they realize they need help from a third-party. People have concerns, no matter the situation. We know what these situations are. They need a solution, and a need is always the answer. That’s why I always tell salespeople not to ask a customer what they need.

The need is the answer. Let’s say my concern is that I’m thirsty. What do I need? A beer. Beer is the answer to thirst. But if I, or you, ask a customer about their need, I delegate the solution responsibility to an amateur because I’m a professional in my field. The customer might answer, but their know-how restricts their ability to respond. They don’t know what the newest things are. It’s your responsibility to say,

“Sure, I can help you with this, but there is a new solution to this. Would you like to hear more about it?” – Yes, they do.

The Big Picture - The Full Strategy Process

Strategy framework that describes the Stradigo strategy process. The process includes three phases; 1. Direct, 2. Prioritize, 3. Act.

When we look at the big picture, we see that three loops need to revolve, and they need to connect. Introducing technology takes matters to the next level.

Currently, I’m working with a billion-dollar company, and they’re not very far in utilizing digital technology as a group. They, of course, use digital technology in their work but mostly individually. Conversations and developments take place under a digital infrastructure. That’s when you have group power. And in most cases, this entirely free if you know how to use the tools and methods! They are very affordable.

When you invite everyone to participate in the first loop, it affects people’s attitudes, and they start implementation right away. Very cool! How do you begin to lead your business in a new way at a management level and the next level, and the next level so that everyone understands the big picture?

Automatic Reporting

One point is also the fact that people complain about the lack of communication. Why don’t people let others know what they’re doing? Why is information moving poorly? I have an easy explanation for that. First of all, when I do something, I should report my doings. I don’t have the time to explain everything that’s happening because it would take as much time, and I wouldn’t progress with my work since I have to report constantly.  

If you have an infrastructure that automatically reports to you and you write everything onto a digital board, the decisions are visible for everyone who wants to look. You can even activate notifications. It’s fantastic. If we lack infrastructure, the information won’t communicate to other people in the organization as effectively.

All the loops of the strategy process need to revolve at their speed and link to one another. The first loop very easily gets detached from the others after a month or so has passed. When the first loop detaches, the second and third loops collapse, and we don’t get sufficiently high-quality ideas that the business needs.

Read more.

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Stradigo is a management consultancy that helps business owners outsmart the competition by discovering blind spots and facilitating the creation of winning strategies.

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Customer Strategy

5.03 Customer Segmentation

Customer Segmentation — 5.03

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Today’s topic is customer segmentation. Do you know what the definition of work is? Work is about removing people’s troubles and worries. These people are called customers. Customers’ have different types of worries, because everyone is an individual. It would be easy if we could sell the same product to everyone! Then we could specialize only in one service or product. What could we do to get efficiency into our work? The answer, of course, is by segmenting customers into groups!

I have been doing segmentation work ever since 1996. For 11 years it was a full-time job for me, and now I create strategies. The goal of almost every strategy is to improve the organization’s segmentation and customer experience. I have a great desire to simplify complexity, and over the years it has become my passion. Now I will explain how customer segmentation can be simplified and how it can even be made into an art.

Work on your customer segmentation

Because of these insights we have created a mini-course on customer segmentatio, which allows you to work on your own segmentation. You read more about it here.

Why segment customers?

A group of people standing on a blue circle. Some of the people are cheering, representing sensing customer’s worries and responding.

Precision offerings. Why should customers be segmented? They need to be given an offer that tackles their need specifically. When the offer strikes the customer’s worry and need exactly, things run smoothly. I use the word worry, because the need is the answer. The customer has a worry, and we satisfy the need by providing a solution. The customer is happy that we got rid of their worry, and therefore they thank us by paying us.

More sales. Another dimension is, of course, our self-interest. We want more sales, because that’s the way our company grows. It is also the way we are able to pay everyone’s salaries. The more customers we are able to help, the better we have carried out our purpose. It isn’t necessarily only about sharing dividends to the shareholders. It’s about growing sales, helping customers, which is a fine societal task – You could even say our duty.

Better profitability. When we finally know how to compose offerings that tackle the customer’s need with precision, we can then make the whole process more fluent and profitable for ourselves. This creates a win-win situation between us and the customer. We both benefit a great deal from it.

Read more about customer segmentation here.

Customer segmentation pyramid with bronze, silver & gold levels and two segments. Segments represent customer needs.

Value for us. The customer base is often visualized as a pyramid. I have for many years simplified this work. Customers can be divided into groups according to their importance: Gold-Silver-Bronze, for example. To us, certain customers are Gold-customers, Silver-customers, or Bronze-customers. The trick is to divide the customers into these groups, based on how valuable they are to us in a monetary sense.

During a flight safety demonstration, it is mentioned that the oxygen mask should be put on yourself before helping others. If we don’t stay alive, we’re not capable of helping others. That’s why our self-interest comes first.

Customer needs. Another way to divide customers according to a customer dimension, in which customers are segmented based to their needs, which I earlier described as worries. This creates a segmentation model. I’ve learned not to make things too complicated!

Back in the day, we made a mistake by making the segments too detailed and intelligent in appearance. Because of this our customers weren’t able to implement the model. In the previous pyramid image, we divide it into six segments. For some companies even a six-way split can be a lot! A division by two vertical segments are usually a pretty good, sometimes three works as well. The next image has examples of various ways a company can segment its pyramid.

Read more about working on your customer segmentation here.

Different types of customer segmentations. Variations between bronze, silver and gold customers.

Some companies may only have one segment, where every customer has the same needs. In addition, there are three value categories, and several varieties of them. Segmentation is often done intuitively, and after a moment of thinking the solution turns out to be completely different. It isn’t easy-peasy.

One option is to have one Gold-customer, all the rest being Bronze-customers. It’s also possible to have no Gold-customers. Services and offerings are usually tailored to them. Usually, consumer businesses only have Bronze-customers. For instance, McDonalds only has one type of customers. They have different products, but they deliver the same way to everyone.

After 10 years of doing this for a living, I decided to buy a marketing automation software. It taught me not to segment companies, but individuals. My head just about exploded!

Could it be, that even in B2B customer relationships selling should be aimed at individuals, persons, avatars? That’s human-to-human business. Suddenly, segmenting became even more interesting, but also more challenging. Which model would bring the most success?

Different types of customer segmentations. Variations between bronze, silver and gold customers.

Drawing the above image took me 10 years. I often tried to explain this verbally, but I didn’t know how to describe it as an image. Then finally I succeeded! This image shows which products and services we sell to different segments. It is why we’ve created a mini-course that supports you in doing your segmentation by using this very model. Click here to learn more.

There exists a basic model offer, that is grey and can fit for any customer. Then there is a white offer or service, which fits the first segment. The blue module only fits only the second segment, and those customers don’t want the white one.

When we rise to the Silver level, we can begin to tailor our services, because these customers buy more and they pay more. That’s why they can also be offered silver modules. Modules can be sold separately or they can be bundled into an offer. Some want solutions, others want to purchase the modules separately.

Gold level customers can be sold everything, in addition to a tailored gold module.

Care models.  On the right side of the image you can find the care models. There are many Bronze-customers, and they buy less. Bronze-customers need to have a well standardized care model, in order to optimize our service and to lower our costs. Nowadays these often are online businesses. As we go up to the Silver level, the care model consist of more tailored services and F2F communication. Gold-customers have a largely custom tailored care model. We also cover how you work with the care model in our mini-course on customer segmentation. Click here to learn more.

Segmentation model. The catch is to do segmentation in two dimensions. Value for us and value for the customer. Products are built so that the customer gets an offer that precisely tackles their situation. Precision products are delivered with a care model, which are differentiated to varying degrees of extent.

As you see, this isn’t the easiest job in the world. I can, however, say that this is the simplest presentation I’m able to produce about this! The most challenging thing is to build the products. That is something that makes me humble, every time!

As many as seven versions are created in segmentation work before the iteration begins to slow down. There are so many options to choose from. If you segment like your competitors, you end up analyzing similar needs and services as them. If we look at this from a differentiation angle, it would be really good if you could group the entire cake according to specific criteria.

Precision offering is the trick. It creates happy customers who buy more, while our company grows and the work becomes more profitable.

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Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.

Categories
Strategic Leadership

2.05 Agile Hybrid Organization

Agile Hybrid Organization | 2.05

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We held an amazing workshop online, and I’m so excited about it. We modified the strategies from the perspective of an individual and from a customer perspective. We came to a realization that we are building an agile hybrid organization. I need to share this with you. 

This image below is our old friend, the hierarchical organization. This style of hierarchy is not doing very well in the present day. Even though it has immensely good features, it also has great weaknesses.

Drawing of an organizational chart with three levels. The number of boxes per level is 1, 3 and 7.

Hierarchichal organization

It’s interesting, that in a hierarchical organization everything needs to be flipped upside down every 3-4 years. A new CEO comes in and decides that things should be done the other way around, with the reason that the other way is “as it should be done”. Then after a while the same pattern repeats.

I have gained experience in this subject. No matter which organization model one creates, in a few years the cons grow bigger and the strenghts are no longer as strong as in the beginning. Because of this the model needs to be changed once again, which the CEO thinks is the biggest innovation. Sometimes the organization is organized into a matrix organisation, at other times the organization gets organized according to functions. It can also be something else, depends on what the CEO wants. That’s everyday life.

Let’s look at why the hierarchical organization is doing poorly.

Drawing of an organizational chart. Accompanied by text: “Slow in action, expensive to upkeep, often demotivating, less profitable”

Hierarchy is slow in action

The main reason why hierarchical organizations are doing poorly is that they are slow organizations. The slowness comes from this. If I have a problem, I need to ask upstairs for permission. The bigger the issue, the higher up the person needs to go in the organization to get permission. If the issue goes flat, the response never comes back down. Decisions aren’t being made. Instead, the issue is left hanging in the air waiting for the next meeting. This causes the customer to suffer, because decisions are not made. Many draw the above model upside-down, so that customers are on top and the management are on the bottom. However, it’s only a semantic change. A hierarchical organization is slow, and doesn’t tend to cope well with the competition, who oftentimes are much faster to react and to decide. A better meeting structure could help.

Less profitable

Another problem with the hierarchical organization is that it’s less profitable. Say what? Exactly. When matters are sustainable, profitability decreases. Lead time isn’t fast enough and the inventory doesn’t move. Surprise, surprise! Higher profitability models exist! Profitability is everyone’s advantage because salaries will continue being paid, customers are number one and the customers are happy. The owners, as well, tend to get more dividends because the company earns more money, which it doesn’t know how to invest properly, so the money is returned to the investors and owners as larger dividends.

Expensive to upkeep

The third problem is that the hierarchical organization is also expensive to upkeep. People need to be controlled and a huge amount of key performance indicators are created. What can’t be measured, doesn’t exist. Reward systems need to be looked at through the indicators, and that’s expensive. As you may guess, controlling costs money. That’s oversight in a nutshell. The more that needs to be measured, the more control measures need to be deployed, and that adds to costs. Simple, right?

Demotivating

The fourth problem is on an emotional level. The hierarchical organization is often demotivating. People don’t like having to wait and not being allowed to do what’s reasonable.

But, a hierarchy has its advantages.

Drawing of an organizational chart. Accompanied by text: “Clear! Good in crisis, measure of success”
Clear

First of all, it’s really clear and people desire clarity! People know exactly who’s where and who’s in charge of what.

Good in crisis

Hierarchy is fantastic in a crisis situation. You give orders, and that’s that. That’s pretty amazing. This ability can’t be lost! If it’s lost, we lose a lot.

Measure of success

To many individuals, hierarchy is also the measure of success. If I go high up in the hierarchy, it’s pretty motivating, almost like winning an Olympic medal.

Drawing of different teams that discuss with each other and share information.

Teams discuss and decide

Another organizational extremity is not to have a hierarchy at all. Instead, a team organization is created, where people are completely self-managing. This has already been in use since the 1950s. It works! However, it needs common ground rules, a Game Book, so that things aren’t going all over the place.

Text: “What if the models were combined?”

Quite many are scared to switch into a complete self-managing model. The word self-managing is in itself pretty bad. A business owner easily gets scared that people will just start doing whatever they want.

Visions of organization

Visions of organization matrix from Perttu Salovaara’s PhD.

I found the above image in Perttu Salovaara’s PhD Thesis. He named the image “Visions of organization”. It has two axis, co-operation and leadership. There’s not too much co-operation on the bottom level, only individualism. Co-operation begins in the middle, in teams, and spreads up to the top level.

The leadership axis has three stages. Is leadership completely top-down and lead from the outside? Or, is it involving, or are people given permission to self-manage? Salovaara came up with nine models. It’s a good image because the myriad of possibilities are made clear. It’s not so, that the next step from a total hierarchy is a total self-managing model. There’s so much in between!

At Stradigo, we consider simplification as part of our organizational DNA. I’ve wondered if Salovaara’s MATRIX could be simplified. That’s when the idea of an agile hybrid organization model struck me. What if we built a hybrid, in which hierarchy and team leading are combined?

Drawing of a hybrid organization that has an organizational hierarchy in the background and smaller dynamic teams in front of the hierarchy.

Agile hybrid organization

Let’s build an agile hybrid organization with self-managing teams. The hierarchical organization stays in the background. That’s when we have a spine and agile teams. Teams are where most of the work is done. Teams come and go, as necessary. The home team, of course, is where one works the most, but in addition to that, there are many other teams one is a part of. They are on top of the hierarchy.

In a world like this, it isn’t important to communicate through the hierarchy. Anyone can speak to whom they like without the manager getting upset. Please, don’t get upset! People must trust themself and their leadership skills in order to not mind this taking place, that is, if their boss chooses to go past you, for example, by talking directly with your subordinates. The decision is made where the best information is.

When I presented this idea at one of my clients, the idea immediately got a round of applause. The agile hybrid organization model is therefore a most natural thing! People said that, yes, this is how it is, this is already how we operate. So, let’s make it formal! Let’s make the organization both clear and agile!

explaining hybrid organization

Now quick decisions can be made where the information is. When hierarchy retreats into the background, but doesn’t fade, and people are allowed to do what’s reasonable, a level of autonomy is created that is strongly motivating. Control improves, because the team members control each other, so that the team makes reasonable decisions.

As a young man I used to work at Nokia Electronics. No-one knew in which direction the world was going, as the new area of business was developing rapidly. A “Let all flowers bloom” culture spread throughout the company, yet there was a hierarchy, and it was in the background. It didn’t interfere with practicalities.

Simple drawing of seven t-shirts of different colors, meaning an individual has several roles.

Individuals have several roles

Because an individual is a member of several teams, they have plenty of different colored t-shirts in their bag. One team has a certain colored shirt, and when a person switches teams, their t-shirt color and role changes. This has been studied around the world.  According to one study one person had approximately 6,8 roles. Therefore, we all have many roles, perhaps even seven, like in the image above.

If you’re a CEO of a company, you, as well, have many different roles. One role is active when you’re a member of the board. Another role is when you’re leading your own management team. The third role is when you’re speaking to a customer. The fourth role is when you’re speaking to the investors, and so on. You might also be a part of several customer projects as a great salesperson. All of us have many roles just like this, no matter what role or responsibility we happen to have at any one given time.

Text: “How are the roles defined?”

This is a question I’ve been asked many times. I always say that there’s no specific person that defines the roles. WHAT?! Let people define the roles for themselves!

Text: Define them yourself! (within the frames) & a small icon of a group of five people standing on a light blue circle.

A senior HR consultant once told me: 

“You know, Markus. Half of Finland’s HR people write standing orders, and the other half tries to implement them.”

It’s completely useless if roles and their definitions are written down somewhere. The definition of work changes constantly! Let people define their roles for themselves, within the appropriate boundaries, of course. The definition creates the lines, but after that, write your own work definitions! Team members write a card on a common digital board, in which the role is shortly described. Everyone gets to pick a sensible and pleasant role for themselves. The team discusses what needs to be added and agrees on it.

Towards the sun by helping customers

Text: Our job is to help customers & a drawing of a person cheering and a drawing of a sun.

One must remember that our job is to help the customers. That’s why the company exists. It’s the big sun and the Purpose. People share in this Purpose and agree that it is important, and they rejoice since they can help.

sense and react

When a team exists, it must sense and react immediately to the customer’s needs. That’s when the team is doing well.

Red Text: “Nothing new!” & a drawing of a person pondering about a light blue diamond inside a thought bubble.

Everything I’ve told you isn’t new information. This is actually about making documentation transparent. There are millions of self-managing teams all over the world. Since the 1950’s humans have created a new way to organize. Hierarchy and self-management have existed, and there are plenty of companies that work as a hybrid. The transformation, however, can be slightly painful, if a proper Game Book isn’t written.

Hybrid organization model, a drawing of an open book, an indigo colored diamond and indigo text: “Game Book”

Ground rules

One must define a handful of central ground rules: For example, in soccer it’s not allowed to kick other players in the legs, and only the goalkeeper can catch the ball with their hands. Some rules are needed, in order for these two organization levels to work well together.

I have facilitated the transformation of a Finnish company into a self-managing model. I suspect that this is among the first transformations in the country, perhaps even the very first. No matter what the truth of the matter is regarding this “firstness”, it is not that common to see these types of transformations in practice. This is quite a new thing after all! What happened after the transformation? This organization’s profit grew with two million euros in their first year post-transformation. We have also created many Gamebooks to tens of organizations.

What kind of rules give us and our customers the WOW feeling? It’s funny that WOW actually stands for Way-Of-Working. New central game rules should be written down in the Gamebook! I always tend to use volunteers for this.

A Gamebook is needed to make all this work out in practice.

Long live the agile hybrid organization!

IGNITE YOUR STRATEGY! Read more.🔥

Finding Us On Social Media

Stradigo

Stradigo is a brand owned by Rdigo Oy (Business-ID: 2120844-1).

Learn more from our Imprint.

Rdigo Oy is registered in Finland as a Limited company. We are a strategy consultancy located in the Helsinki capital region.

We’ve been in business since 2007. The company name comes from the latin word Redigo, meaning both ‘I shape’ & ‘I renew’.

Stradigo combines the word strategy with Rdigo.