Case studies

Barriers to Growth Assessment, Mapping and Measurement. A manufacturing business was losing huge amounts of money (tens of millions each year – 30% of revenues) in a ten-year-old venture. The product was fantastic but the costs – manufacturing, distribution, further innovation, retailer margins - were cripplingly expensive.

I conducted twelve confidential interviews with senior managers to map their strategy. There were huge differences of opinion about which sales channel to focus on. Both channels appeared to lose money but one offered growth potential.

I dug further into the financials. All the costs were allocated to the two channels in proportion to sales. But the strategy map revealed that many of the innovation and distribution costs applied only to the growing sales channel. When the costs were re-apportioned it became clear that the flat sales channel was actually profitable.

My client refocused on that channel. They didn’t need to cut any jobs, though a few R&D employees were reallocated to another part of the business. And the next year they made a profit in that segment for the first time ever.

Contact me if you want to map and measure YOUR strategy.

Competitors. For one of my clients, a particular competitor was a real worry. The competitor was new to the market, but was successfully building share.

We gathered a group of sales, marketing and finance people together for a two day Competitor Wargame. Part of the exercise was to figure out what they would do if they were working for that competitor. They had fun plotting their own employer’s downfall! But the exercise also gave them plenty of insights into the likely priorities of the competitor, and together we figured out how we were going to beat them.

By coincidence, two months later, the competitor published a trade ad which set out its four top priorities. What they didn’t know was that we had successfully predicted each one, and had already put in place a sales and marketing plan to pre-empt them.

Contact me if you want to outsmart YOUR competitors.

Teams. One of my clients, an IT business, was bought by its managers. The new owners wanted to explain their new strategy to their employees in a dramatic and appealing way.

I designed a Management Cockpit for them, and together we turned their boardroom into a living strategy room. Employees came into the room in groups of ten. Ahead of them they saw details of their vision and goals for the next three years. Behind them were the company’s engines, the things that gave them their force in the marketplace (their brand architecture, their technological advantages, details of their approach to product management). To the right was a map of the market – how it was segmented, who the competitors were, and how they intended to beat them.  And to the left was a Balanced Scorecard – a measurable map of their business strategy.

They had a half-hour presentation from the new management team, and a chance to challenge and change the information on the walls. Result? The employees ‘got’ the strategy completely and came away with a real sense of purpose.

(The company continues to use the Cockpit. Some information remains constant – the vision and the brands for example - but much changes. They track the sales for their own products and for major competitors. They add insights whenever they uncover them. They update the measures of their strategic progress. And they hold regular review and planning meetings in the Cockpit, at all levels of the business.)

Contact me if you want to dramatise YOUR strategy.

Training and Teamwork. The morale of 60-strong research business was low. Understandably - they had been subjected to constant major reorganisations by their owners over several years.

I organised a relaunch event dedicated to training in research techniques, much of it given by other people in the team. We also created ongoing special interest groups which focused on specific leading-edge techniques.

All team members volunteered for Myers-Briggs profiling and we reviewed the results in subteams – learning how different people preferred different ways of communicating, planning and taking decisions.

Finally I facilitated regular reviews of client projects. We focused on why some clients made better use of the research than others, and on how to improve the impact of research in future.

By working together better, they’ve boosted their morale, they’ve improved their client service and they’ve transformed their clients’ use of research.

Contact me if you want to turbocharge YOUR team.

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