Using Design Thinking to Guide Your Next Corporate Strategy
As you may already know, the only constant in running a business is that of change. Many of the strategies and tactics that we discuss provide insight to that change and give an operator the ability to react and manage the outcomes. Although this is an active process, once a year it is important to slow down and do some strategic planning.
Strategic planning is more than just reviewing the year prior and creating initiatives. It is a time where the team can come together to discuss what they are seeing in the market. They can review the wants of the client and explore how the organization can be better. It can also be a time to create engagement and alignment between a diverse group of managers.
The following breakdown provides tips and a loose agenda for using design thinking to guide your next annual planning session. They are all important, so be sure to consider each one carefully.
PLAN
MAKE IT SPECIAL – The first goal associated with annual planning is to make it special. Spend some money and hold it offsite away from potential distractions. Schedule some team build events and plan on having dinner together during the process. Create a relaxed atmosphere to spark innovation and use the time to increase connections between the team.
2. TAKE YOUR TIME – Although you might be able to squeeze the session into a single day there is an advantage to taking your time and making it two. Some people might appreciate the time to fully comprehend the numbers and think through the opportunities. Others will enjoy the time away from the office to connect with their peers.
3. INVITE THE RIGHT PEOPLE – Spend some time to think about who should be in the planning session. Who will be instrumental in implementing the strategy? Who spends the most time with current customers? What is your session plan for key positions? Many see an invitation to the annual planning session as an honor, so make sure to leverage it to engage and motivate.
EMPATHIZE
4. PULL THE MAP – The initial item on the agenda is to pull the strategy map that was made last year to confirm and celebrate accomplishments. What strategies, initiatives, and KPIs were developed in the last session? Did they all get accomplished? What were the outcomes? What were the roadblocks? Be careful not to critique people or create a negative environment. Stay in a problem-solving mindset to understand and evaluate the issues.
5. REVIEW THE NUMBERS – After you refresh the team on the strategies and initiatives, take a dive into the numbers. Start with the financials and then review the scorecard. Did your strategies create change? Did the numbers react to the initiatives? Identify what worked and what did not. Be careful not to solve potential problems. Take this time to educate the team and ask questions.
DEFINE/IDEATE
6. IDENTIFY OPPORTUNITY – Now that the team has spent time reviewing the strategies and outcomes from the past year, you can start to transition into identifying potential opportunities. Start this by discussing what each of your stakeholders (customer, employee, and shareholder) want. Try to be as detailed as possible and identify why they think the item is important.
7. THINK BIG – With the opportunity defined, you can start to think big, look to the future, and establish strategic goals. How can the organization best take advantage of the opportunity? What does the team need to do to solve the problem? In order to not think too small, incorporate a concept called plussing. Plussing takes a single idea and works it around the room to make it bigger, bolder, and better. We may start with the need to add more seats to an airplane, continue on with adding seats to the outside of the cabin, and end with an idea to create a premium seat in a dome on top of the plane.
8. EVOLVE YOUR KPIS – Before moving on to the prototype and planning stages, take a moment to identify how to measure if the new strategic goals are successful. Do you need to change them from last year? Remember - Do not fall into the trap of making a yes or no measurement or making it too hard to see a connected path between the goal and the number. Keep it simple and be ok with using leading indicators. For example – if I want to increase sales I may have a strategic goal of hiring salespeople. If I intend for the salespeople to make outbound calls and drive leads to create sales, the metric may be a number of calls and a number of leads generated per week.
PROTOTYPE
9. CREATE A NEW MAP - Changing wants from stakeholders, new ideas, and unexpected obstacles happen to everyone. In the annual planning session, make sure to update your strategy map so you can share it with your team. The one-page strategy map is an invaluable tool for quickly aligning people that were not in the session and explaining the “why” behind a number of significant decisions.
10. GO FOR QUICK WINS – Big ideas and measurable outcomes provide direction for where you want to go. Unfortunately, this is not enough. Break the vision down into smaller parts. What are the steps you need to take to accomplish the goals? Can the steps be organized to deliver prototype deliverables along the way? A collection of small accomplishments is easier to measure, to pivot if outcomes don’t align, and to manage ideas through implementation.
11. ACT FAST – The last step in creating the strategy is to develop a sprint plan for execution. Earlier in this book, we explored sprint plans in detail, but it’s simply who needs to do what, by when. As you begin to implement, be sure to keep an eye on the scorecard and your KPIs. If something is working, do more. If it is not, stop and pivot the initiative.
Let the Stonehill team guide your next corporate strategy. Contact us today to schedule a Strategy and Design Thinking session.