Author: Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

Customer Strategy

5.04 The strategic core-questions customers deal with

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date June 22, 2021
1 Comment on 5.04 The strategic core-questions customers deal with

The Strategic Core Questions Customers Deal With — 5.04

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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One hallmark of a strategic core question that it deals with a high-level topic. What do customers really want from us? Wouldn’t it be nice to understand what it is and to make the entire staff internalize the core issues? The exercise I will soon reveal is quite powerful. You should involve your whole group to take part in it.

Customer's strategic core question

In practice, it’s very hard to get people to think about matters from the customer’s point of view. It’s too easy just to focus on selling products and services because that’s what our work essentially is. We think inside-out, even though we know well enough that we should approach things from a customer-oriented perspective.

How could we get people to work outside-in? Let’s begin by receiving the customer’s question first, and then we explain how the issue is solved. Very simple, but oh so difficult!

An authentic customer-oriented approach and deeply understanding isn’t exactly easy! People have been working with the customer-oriented approach for a very long time. Yet, now just talking about a customer-oriented approach is not enough. Words must actually translate into actions. It’s time to take the next step. Yet, the question remains. What does a customer-oriented approach look like in practice? This question can be remedied with the following exercise.

What are the customers' TOP3 strategic core questions to us?

First of all, let’s think. What are the three core questions our customers ask us? They are high-level (strategic) core questions, which don’t necessarily have the appearance of concrete worries. It’s a question like… What are the customers asking about? If you and your group can figure out an answers, wonderful things will happen in your organization!

This is how the exercise goes: First you write the customer’s core question in the header. The two boxes will be filled with text. The first box is called Why? and the other box is called How?

Why? In this situation why stands for the reason causing market pressure. What is the logic, the rationale, that is improved through actions? Often these things have to do with changing market conditions. A need must be answered. The customers are likewise experiencing their own customer pressures (in a B2B space). 🙂 Demands may include things like sustainable development. But pressure can also come from the owners, for example better results or profitability. Technological change also brings with it another set of challenges on top of the previously mentioned ones. Competition also exists, which need to be taken into account. At a fundamental level this is comparable to an arms race that is decided by who can be the most efficient and the fastest while delivering the best possible result for the customers. Cherish your competitiveness and take care of it lest you fall behind.

Make your group think about this very important topic. What is the market situation and why must we act? Your organization can reap huge benefits by finding answers to these questions together, even if the questions are obvious.

Box number two: How do we respond to the identified market pressures?

Think about this from your perspective:

The second box is filled with issues that can help us better help our customers. What is our answer? How do we understand the customer’s situation? How do we act? What kind of services and solutions should we provide for the customer’s needs?

Differentiation is a challenge. We really need to sit down and think about how we are different from our competitors. Differentiation is most times quite difficult because everyone copies each other fast. And even if we think we’re better than our competitors, we necessarily aren’t. It can be an optical illusion. They are smart as well and think a lot, and do everything they can to take our salary payments. Ouch!

Lets once again consider things from my perspective:

Differentiation should be in the details. I have spoken a lot about my sun model, which is utilized to list several points to differentiate in.

Let’s look at this from your perspective:

But what is the principle through which we differentiate? The boxes in the image above only fit the principles, the high-quality how-questions. How do we operate in practice? We might need a new Game Book to write our changing operation models into.

Let’s look at this from my perspective:

As I write this, I held an exercise with an IT unit. IT is difficult in a sense because they easily go and blame the company and their own customers. Others don’t necessarily understand IT. I told them to stop the blaming! If an idea to blame someone arises, take note also of your own behavior. How could you have spoken so, that the other person would have understood? Don’t point with your finger, your thumb is always pointing back to you. You can’t change others, but you can change yourself!

When the two boxes in the image above are filled with thoughts, it creates a page for each core question. Write 7-10 bullet points, no more.

Do this work together with your team. We did the same exercise today during an online meeting. This is a very healthy exercise! It creates a feeling that issues are clarified. Even if these are familiar subjects, you can rest assured people have different visions about the world around us. The point of the exercise is to get your whole group to go in the same direction. It’s surprising that we edit our words so in detail. Words have meanings and better words are better. Words indeed still are the best weapons.

Let’s look at this from your perspective:

When we do this exercise, we should also know how to challenge ourselves.

Let’s switch back to my perspective:

A third party is often good to include in the challenging process because they know to ask questions one wouldn’t otherwise come to think of.

Let’s look at this from your perspective, while talking from mine:

We all have our mantras. Each and every one of us lives in our own working environment, which creates these mantras and beliefs. Break the bubble with good questions. If challenging is done wrong, people only get upset. That’s a talent to practice.

Let’s look at this from my perspective:

Not so long ago I also ended up in a bad situation because I didn’t know to challenge as I should have. This led to everyone getting upset. I chose the wrong words, but luckily this case was only one out of 150. Challenging is difficult, and once again I learned something new! I really had to contemplate the situation personally.

Now I am addressing you, the reader:

Break the bubble, my friend. Try to see if there are new opportunities!

HELP! WHAT IS GOING ON?!

The next step is focus areas. We have created three pages with very important points. One page usually forms during one workshop. I no longer hold two-hour workshops, 1h45min instead. Distance working needs a 15-minute break before the next meeting. Hence 1h45min per page!

We held the first workshop yesterday, and today as we proceeded to the second meeting, we received a comment

“Now I’m starting to understand what happened yesterday!”

It might be that the issues inside the boxes are obvious, but it takes time to really comprehend them! We live in our bubble and culture that has formed. Breaking the bubble is an artform!

Recognizing the focus areas is the next phase. I tend to crystallize the needed change into three focus areas, which are followed by two to three big breakthrough goals. We have suddenly hopped down from the helicopter perspective into the concrete world.

I can assure you, that the concrete actions and goals that have formed during this exercise aren’t the same as if you looked at your goals without the upper-level perspective. It can be a clear difference. Because this exercise doesn’t require investing many hours, I claim this is a delicious and useful investment. It takes people in a common direction. Our culture can consist of many big bugs, or soft spots as I call them, and this way they are exposed. It can create better goals.

This is my motto:

Having your head in the clouds means that we are at a strategic level. We need to get back down to earth, into the concrete world. People are so used to thinking about concrete things daily, that one must almost force them (in a positive way) to rise to the skies. From that perspective, you get a different view of reality. If all you do is stay on the ground, in everyday life, it easily creates a narrow perspective. This is Markus’s motto.

Point of the exercise

The first point of this strategic core question exercise is to strengthen the common direction. The conversation it creates is fruitful. We always receive positive pulse comments, such as

“Today we got new perspectives!”

One perspective might be the customer perspective…

Point number two: You can get better goals. When they are implemented, you get a more successful business. Normally, goals are broken down into actions, which are followed during strategy implementation.

Try this exercise and include a third-party facilitator!

Ignite your strategy!🔥 This is how big things begin to happen! 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.

Strategic Leadership

2.03 Strategic goals into actions

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date June 8, 2021
2 Comments on 2.03 Strategic goals into actions

Strategic goals into actions — 2.03

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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I have an exciting topic for today! I’m talking about how strategic goals are put into action. A strategic goal is always a high-quality idea. How are high-quality ideas put into practice?

Strategy: High-quality goals

A strategy is all about the helicopter perspective. One must have one’s head in the clouds but also really long legs – this is my motto. Once the entire strategic thinking has been crystallized onto a single strategy page, the Strategy 1Pager, the strategy must be implemented through these goals. These goals are always high-quality, but the actions themselves happen at the grassroots level. A gap very often forms in-between. How is the gap closed so that the strategy becomes concrete and implements faster? That is worth knowing.

Concrete actions with subgoals

Once the strategic goal is broken down into subgoals, it becomes concrete much more easily. This is why subgoals are needed because they are broken down into actions.

The above structure is needed to implement the strategy. It’s a very simple idea, but the work is very often left undone.

People implementing the actions are sometimes very impatient, they want concreteness immediately. Take your time! The upper-level problem needs to be clarified first, and only then can it be broken down into subgoals and concrete actions. I always tell people that now is the time to look at the company from the CEO’s perspective. One must dare to stay on the upper level for a moment so that it becomes clear. This is how better goals and actions are created.

The entire idea is to find more meaningful actions!

Responsibilities

Responsibility is needed, of course. Companies are good at giving responsibility, but it can be, that the correct people to hold the responsibilities are found faster if the strategy is clearly divided into subgoals.

The worst-case scenario is that the link is broken and the strategy remains as a PowerPoint slide presentation, which is looked at once a year. Transparency is the key and a practical way to follow–up on everyone and their work.

Resourcing

A company always has a few crucial key persons, who are always up-front working in ever project. If this happens, no one will have the time to do anything. The strategy won’t become concrete and implement.

Team members who begin implementing and planning the goals become easily overloaded with work. A map of resources needs to be made to see directly how people are distributed between projects. An individual must not be involved in too many projects, only in one or two subgoals. If someone has four projects going on simultaneously, it’s not good. Implementation is delayed!

Roadmap

How is the strategy’s higher goals reached? First, one needs to create a road map by prioritizing subgoals: What should be done first, and what comes after that?

Once the road map has been created with the above method, the outcome is that people begin to implement their purpose. Everyone is so happy!

Roadmap in sprints

A sprint takes place over a week or two. When the road map and goals are implemented in sprints, the first thing is to look at the work pile: What has been achieved during the previous sprint and which tasks are chosen for the next one?

In the image above, the blue squares represent the subgoals and the grey squares represent the tasks. When tasks are chosen only for the next week of the two that make up the full spring, people know pretty well their workload situation and how much work they are able to take on during the next week. That’s when they choose a more realistic amount of tasks to complete. Also, everyone is happier when they don’t need to be stressing about the work pile. There’s no need to carry the weight of the whole pile on one’s shoulders, it’s enough to implement the current goals!

Sprints create time pressure! People know that after a week or two they will be asked if they finished their task. This leads to the fact that people put in the effort to finish the task on time. Instead of creating something extra fine around the task, they focus on the core task.

When working in sprints, projects converge, focus on the core. Traditionally, the schedule has been delayed, when extra-fine things have been added during project meetings. When a project’s schedule won’t yield, people prioritize and focus on the core of the tasks.

Strategy board

To run and lead this whole project one needs a strategy board.

I have noticed that bigger companies require two sorts of boards. One is for the management team, which includes the big choices and goals and how to proceed with them. After breaking down the big goals, the subgoals and the tasks are then put onto another board. When the goals and tasks are weekly followed up through the strategy boards, the strategy implements quickly!

The strategy is implemented

Somehow the logic in this is pretty simple. The magic is in the way one puts this into action, how the structure for the required tools and meeting agendas is built.

After working a long time with strategy implementation, every project has brought new ways in how to make the work transparent more efficiently. That’s how people learn to prioritize better and success will follow.

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.

Strategic Leadership

2.01 Robust strategy implementation

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date June 8, 2021
2 Comments on 2.01 Robust strategy implementation

Robust strategy implementation – How to do it!

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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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.

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

A good meeting structure is required to follow up the implementation process frequently.
Dividing goal responsibilities, resourcing, and prioritizing need to take place.
People need to be involved in goal implementation and subgoal planning.
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.
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!
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.

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?”

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

Strategic Planning

1.05 Vision is useless!

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

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Strategic Planning

1.02 When is it worth updating the strategy?

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date June 4, 2021
3 Comments on 1.02 When is it worth updating the strategy?

Stradigo

When is it worth updating the strategy? — 1.02

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Customer Strategy

5.01 Understanding The Customer In-Depth

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date April 15, 2021
7 Comments on 5.01 Understanding The Customer In-Depth

Understanding the Customer In-Depth — 5.01

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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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.

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

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

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 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:

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Ignite your strategy by understanding the customer in-depth! 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.

Typical Mistakes

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

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date April 14, 2021
1 Comment on 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

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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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.

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

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:

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!

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!

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!

If you do this, you can 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.

Strategy Implementation

3.01 The Presence Of Strategy In Everyday Business

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date April 12, 2021
3 Comments on 3.01 The Presence Of Strategy In Everyday Business

The presence of strategy in daily work — 3.01

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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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

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

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

Meetings, meetings...

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

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

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

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

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

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.🔥

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.

Strategic Leadership

2.02 Kickstarting strategy implementation

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date April 7, 2021
1 Comment on 2.02 Kickstarting strategy implementation

Kickstarting strategy implementation — 2.02

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

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

The Strategy Journey of a company described as three connected loops.

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.

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.

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

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.🔥

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.

Strategic Planning

1.01 A Successful Strategy is a Journey

Post author By Markus Westerlund
Post date March 28, 2021
9 Comments on 1.01 A Successful Strategy is a Journey

Stradigo

A Successful Strategy is a Journey — 1.01

Markus Westerlund

Strategy is my passion! I love to simplify complex work and finally squeeze the strategy on one single page, the Strategy 1Pager.

Share this blog

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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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.

The Strategic Core Questions Customers Deal With — 5.04

Markus Westerlund

Customer's strategic core question

What are the customers' TOP3 strategic core questions to us?

Think about this from your perspective:

Lets once again consider things from my perspective:

Let’s look at this from your perspective:

Let’s look at this from my perspective:

Let’s look at this from your perspective:

Let’s switch back to my perspective:

Let’s look at this from your perspective, while talking from mine:

Let’s look at this from my perspective:

Now I am addressing you, the reader:

HELP! WHAT IS GOING ON?!

Point of the exercise

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Stradigo

Strategic goals into actions — 2.03

Markus Westerlund

Strategy: High-quality goals

Concrete actions with subgoals

Responsibilities

Resourcing

Roadmap

Roadmap in sprints

Strategy board

The strategy is implemented

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Stradigo

Robust strategy implementation – How to do it!

Markus Westerlund

Robust strategy implementation

1. A tuned meeting structure

2. Resourcing and timing

3. Excitement in the work

4. Goal planning

5. Leadership tools

6. Arrange financing

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Stradigo

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

Markus Westerlund

Vision is difficult to define

Customers grant you your position

Why is a vision sentence needed?

A deeper meaning

The Purpose

Towards a deeper purpose

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Stradigo

Stradigo

When is it worth updating the strategy? — 1.02

Markus Westerlund

When is the time to update the strategy?

Mergers & Acquisitions

Market changes

Finance and routines

Better competitiveness.

More growth

More excitement

The gap in the strategy

Slow Renewal

Customer-oriented approach

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

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Stradigo

Understanding the Customer In-Depth — 5.01

Markus Westerlund

Customer perspective?

Internal processes

The Zipper model – Two processes meet

Worry — Need = Solution

Customer’s worry – Your solution

Customer Situations

Situation — Worry