Paving the way for a great 2024
An unorthodox guide to how to articulate a strategy in a horizontal organisation.
Introduction
This is the Part 1 of a series that explains how Product Managers can be helpful in a consultancy business. In this article we will dive deep into one of the specific areas where a PM could help a lot.
It is the beginning of 2024 and it’s likely you have just participated or you are going to participate in any sort of strategy session to pave the way for a wonderful 2024.
Well, this is what we have done recently. We have spent a day and a half, deciding and debating the main problems are we going to focus in 2024, what are going to do, and how we know we are on the right track.
Disclaimer: this is going to be a different post from the previous ones. I normally don’t share specific tactics or dynamics, but experiences and reflections. Nonetheless, I think this could be useful if you have to organise a strategy session yourself.
Caveat: Thinking With You operates in a different manner compared to the typical consultancy businesses. We don’t have a C-level, therefore we have no hierarchy. What we have instead de-crentralized groups we came to call EDI (Equipo De Iniciativa - Initiative Team) that is assembled with the people who know the context the best to make a decision (horizontal leadership). This renders this exercise much more interesting and fun. For more info on how TWY organises itself, you can read this article.
Let’s dive in…
Overall Structure
Since I was the one in charge of the preparation and facilitating the entire space, I wanted to clarify to everyone overall the overall structure of the session using simple terms. One visual that was quite helpful, is the one that Bob Moesta uses to explain systems in general:
The reason I’ve chosen this image was because I wanted to reflect that strategy is worthless if we only based it on lagging indicators and that strategy is something we can control (at some extent - inputs and action), and check whether the outputs generated by our system are getting the expected outcome.
Basically the agenda was organised to cover all four parts of the highlighted picture, Inputs, Actions, System, and Outputs.
Caveat: you may wonder, how on earth can we develop and deploy a strategy if we don’t know where we are going? Great point. If you have done your homework, your Vision should be an input to determine where you want to be within a certain timeframe. If you don’t have it, please run a Vision exercise to understand the destination you want to reach.
Input
This is the part where you must be “rigorous” in terms of the information and context the entire team needs in order to articulate two things:
The most pressing problems we want to focus on.
The list of actions that would help us to solve the problems and expected change we expect to see, using a measurable indicator.
There are no silver-bullets when it comes to gather the information you should use and consider to come up with the above two points. In our case, we had some data about market trends, customer feedback, competitors’ insights, some expert opinion of the field, and the business lines and how much each of them contribute to the revenue of the company.
One of the things I found tricky, was the idea of creating a proper diagnosis with the information I described previously, which in my opinion should be the thing we should use, rather than just data, hunches, and intuition.
Nonetheless, we were able to come up with some of the problems we deemed important, based on all of the above.
Caveat: be very cautious with the words and vocabulary you use to present the data points. This might throw people off, cause confusion among team members, and therefore set a bad tone for the rest of the session.
Actions
There are three things we wanted to get as the output of the system: clarity, alignment, and urgency.
We ran a very simple exercise for each of our business lines, based on the problems we have identified, what were the things we must start doing (we are not doing today), the things we must keep doing, and things we should stop doing entirely.
This is where most of the time was spent, because we want to make sure that we were not reinventing the wheel, combine the actions, make some riffs to see if something new was emerging, and make sure we have a right balance of short-term vs mid and long-term actions.
Caveat: the outcome of the actions that you execute today could take months to materialized, and therefore see the results. We wanted to make sure we have a good portfolio of actions that could drive results also in the short-term, even if we know that they may not bring the biggest impact to the business.
System
Organizations tend to overindex on actions and not so much on thinking if they have the proper structure required to make it a reality. At this point we wanted to sure that we have a well-oiled machine to execute on the above. Coherence is the name of the game here.
If we say we want to focus on X type of customers to get more Y projects, therefore we will do Z as an action. We made sure to answer the following questions:
How do we need to organise ourselves? Are set up for success?
What / whom do we need to make it happen?
What could be the impact on the rest of the team (considering we are only 25)? Will any of the other things be affected as a result?
Caveat: this is not only about people and their interactions, but also the tools, resources, and knowledge you need.
Output
Nothing of the above is done just for fun. Yes, we love what we do and the intrinsic motivation of helping customers is one of the drivers for doing what we do, but we have 25 families to feed. That’s why must keep ourselves accountable of executing our actions, generate the output, and check whether they are producing the expected impact. So here the questions we should asked ourselves is:
What is the result of executing this actions? What do we need to produce or generate given a set of inputs, actions, and a well-oiled machine?
Think about this as the generation / creation of something that eventually will cause the effect we expect to see in customers and revenue. For instance, a brand new course or training we can offer, or a new asset that will facilitate X, or a partnership with Y, or a different way to approach, a new way to position ourselves, a brand-new web…. You can go on and on.
Huge Caveat: you may be wondering, how are these guys going to know whether the outputs they are going to generate end up having the impact that they talked about before - help customers make progress, satisfaction in what they do, and also being sustainable. That is something we haven’t explicitly written down, although we went through it at a high level, and hopefully we will realise we need it when things won’t flow into the direction we expect.
For a consultancy business, where in most of the time you are trading hours, the way to measure it, is by see if you are landing more leads, that become a promise, then an potential opportunity, till you land the first gig. After that is all about “conversion” and continuity of the relationship. As you can see, we know the indicators, but we haven’t defined what success looks like for us. Something to improve in my opinion for the next time.
Challenges
Do your homework: this is connected with the next point, but having a strategy session without having articulated your vision, is like moving “faithfully” towards an unknown destination. Would it be the place we wanted to be eventually? Would it be beneficial for us to get there?
Preparing thoughtfully: You cannot leave these spaces unplanned. You need to think thoughtfully what kind of conversations you want to have and where you want to spend more time on. The type of dynamic you select will set the tone of the ideas that are generated asa a result.
Keeping the pace: The cost of these type of meetings is quite expensive, so I prefer to be labeled as the grinch of the space, rather than cover half of the agenda.
Being flexible: Contrary to the previous point, it is quite likely you will need to adapt the agenda, because the coffee break or lunch break could be extended. It is better to let people digest things, and not overwhelming them with too many continued sessions.
Rinse and Repeat: if I had to run the same exercise again, I would do some things differently. In fact, I’ve started to collect certain information and share it to people on our monthly meetings, to start showing the indicators relevant for our business and show the trend and evolution. This will start generating the awareness and it won’t sound odd when we say “how these numbers should look like to know we are going into the right direction?”. Another thing that I found interesting, is that some interesting ideas came up in conversations after the 2 days we spent together. I’m thinking now how to take advantage of it in the days after to capture that knowledge and incorporating it.
Don’t try to boil the ocean: if it’s the first time you are running this type of dynamic, because it used to be emergent or more informal, lower your expectations. Focus on showing important data to people and they can understand it. Try to hear all the voices and have a decent plan you can live with.
Conclusion
There is no real magic when you have to run a strategy session. You cannot pull tricks as if you were David Copperfiled. Rather, it’s more about setting the tone to know what is supposed to happen and where all people must put their energy.
Make sure that all the individuals who are going to participate have the same information, clarify concepts, unpack words that may lead to misunderstandings, and use an activity that is not complicated. It will all depends on the audience you have. In our case, we come from many different backgrounds, and creating a shared understanding is mandatory.
If you are more interested on the things we are doing at the product level at Thinking, feel free to reach out at federicocasabianca@thinkingwihtyou.com or messaging me directly:
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