You want to transform or change, create a vision or new direction, solve a series of challenges or just one big one. You want to create a huge success out of some new opportunity you've got. You will call what you are going to do about all these things - your strategy right?

Frankly we don't care what you call it.

“The perpetual act of removing anything in the way of you achieving your dreams.”

Most businessmen (with a bit of thought) will likely agree with a definition like that.

They will seek to create a vision, a mission and then start to figure out what needs to get done and what needs to change - well wrap that up and it's the strategy. Sounds fine except it seldom works. That's because the system that's already in place is incredibly impervious and it's not about to take this upstart lightly. The stuff that won't let the new stuff start never gets stopped.

In almost every case we will get to an inspiring 'strategy' where everyone is spectacularly excited. They will be all signed up to getting after the challenges and starting to think in detail what it will take. They genuinely mean it. Then, some short time later, they recognise the enormity of the task. Later still it fails completely, is sub-optimal or takes way beyond the desired time to get to any meaningful scale.

Travelling the planet I've concluded that strategy and airports are two insanely fucked up ideas. Airports appear conceived for the benefit of retailers and robotic procedures - not the customer - strategies (similarly) get to be the domain of the few and not the many responsible for executing them. We call all the stuff that gets in the way of any progress a Red Box. That's one heck of a lot of red.

For me new strategy today means that to get to that dream you will need a wholesale reinvention of the business system through the lens of your future customers. Think about that. Designing your system based on what your future consumer needs and wants and not in pursuit of the sprawling cathedral of tedium. Many business leaders need a rocket. Many people have become comfortably numb to the red boxes.

Let's unpack what we mean by this a little?

Many clients don't even know their current ones. And that's a massive challenge. The latest preoccupation is with data and analytics - knowing the consumer intimately. The likely outcome, at the pace of change today is that big brands (the ones we know and love today) either change fast or get taken out by fresh and athletic youngsters. We've been in situations where there's at least a hundred reasons per hour (RPH) why the business will be incapable of making this work. A lot of red boxes.

Whatever word you call it it means being always on, learning in real time, failing intelligently but forever prototyping and developing meaningful experiences that your customers like, refer and default to. Almost the antithesis of how large enterprise is currently designed. They are just wired up wrong, connected to fail (not connected or interconnected much at all). Business is contracted to stay stuck. This is way beyond just solving for the data.

This is behaviour and mentality. Am not even going to call it culture - that's way too macro.

Many of the businesses we see are the opposite of athletic. They are uninspiring, lost, bureaucratic, crude, ineffective, expensive, confusing, and outdated. Their policies, processes and procedures are worse than that. Read the following sentence until the meaning of it shouts out loud - “The reason we don't find the solutions to our problems is because the answers to our questions interfere with our concepts.

One of the abiding comments made about airports and strategies, and it got me thinking, is - “My 5 year old would make a better job of it than these guys.” I thought this is a powerful insight. If these companies are so wedded to the ways they've always done things (and yet confess that they are headed off a cliff) then why not let my 5 year old loose.

Worth a shot right?

Ask A Teenager

Sadly (happily) I don't have a 5 year old. But the concept has stuck with me. Our passion is to challenge the existing system through the lens of the typical beneficiary, not someone with expert* and therefore defensive knowledge of it. Having a long standing experience of any system and structure isn't the best mindset for building a new one - one that's designed to work for the world as it will be?

* These existing experts will still be invaluable in transforming their existing stuff into the new system. Be prepared though that it will be another tough trick - to change their mentality to a willing one - but we'll come back to that.

In structured visual terms it's relatively easy to build a framework (a visual architecture of how the business could/should/might look in the future. (Green Boxes) It's also possible to create a similar (mirrored) look at the restraining system that has to be dismantled in order for the new one to emerge. (Red Boxes)

The work begins here.

Armed with these two artefacts (Green and Red) we need to drill into what's ACTUALLY going on in both contexts. This is forensic detective work undertaken by those without bias and projection, judgement or agenda. That means it's unlikely that the CURRENT leaders or managers can get involved. No offence.

Let's assume we've got an enlightened leadership (and the permission of the executive) to do any of this. We move on.

This is war against an entrenched enemy. So we need to think very differently. We need to use stealth and guile but we also need to have the high ground on integrity and transparency. We are all trying to make this work and do the right things. This is hard admittedly but it IS the right thing. We have to do things that sound crazy because the enemy is crazy too. The enemy has become the master. It's hidden everywhere and it's inside us.

This is a crusade against an insidious enemy - commodity, mediocrity and complacency. And us!

Many businesses do little that's unique these days. How they do at the detail is where they distinguish a product or service. Business has to challenge itself never succumb to these three horsemen of the apocalypse. Each individual has to be mindful. They have to do something different each day to ensure they aren't failing at them. It's hard. It's the enemy within and none of us ever want to be told that it's us. But it is. And that's what's going to come back in our face if we get this right.

Yes that's right

Readiness

Briefing our army is counterintuitive too. There would be no brief. They wouldn't see our prototype - our architecture of the future - and nor would they see our hypothesis of the system that's holding us back. We dont need any more bias or unintentionally restained thinking. The army is created by engaging a bunch of the youngest customers/audiences we can find to tell us what it's really like being a consumer.

Initial Detection

The team is allowed a good period of time (weeks) to get out there and ask the questions in this innocent way. All the while they are making notes, working together and rating and ranking what they find. This first cut will be an objective assessment of the terrain that will challenge our own concepts and notions.

They will then do the same on the internal organisation and any partner or supply chain eco-system. Asking whatever questions - posing whatever ideas, questions or thoughts that occur to them and building a record all the while.

Anyone currently involved who has an opinion or preconception (leader/manager) should be locked away while this is going on. Looking at where best practice already exists is worst practice.

Anyone who hasn't been involved in strategy but is young and open minded and already works in the firm could possibly be included. Otherwise we just go and invite them from the primary audiences. Whatever it costs it is a fraction of the cost of going out of business.

The people we select are crucial. The people who are likely to help most are those with an open mind and without an agenda. They should have a curious, creative - non sarcastic or cynical mindset - so they are unlikely to be expert in anything specifically. They will be technology savvy and interested in what's going down.

They will be younger than you.

Their question will be to find out what's happening internally, externally and in general. What's REALLY happening that WE need to know to give us the intelligence to win. They will unpack things through their perspectives and start to reassemble a very different picture of our everyday life. To ignore what comes back would be plainly ridiculous.

We are on the hunt for the Red Boxes - the stuff that will sink us. The stuff that goes without saying - the truly dangerous. The stuff that's beeen left unfixed and that's known but unspoken. The stuff that is plain or just hidden in front of everyone's noses. The stuff that the business is conditioned or just scared to give a name to and that people have defended for years as just the way stuff gets done around here.

When presented with anything as they wander about they will ask why and why not. They can challenge what seems stupid, inefficient or just opaque. They can ask who said that it must be done like that - and they have the power to question them too. They should ask what if something was done a different way. They are recording it all. They must be supported. Denying them such support would be a really big red red box right?

This series of innocent questions has a wide arc. It can be applied to all the usual suspects, the audiences, the competition, the marketplace and the unseen threats that our crew will unearth. Their attitude will be refreshing and based on a degree of incredulity. They will observe that the way things are currently done have clear and more effective alternatives. What they emerge with will cover a wide spectrum.

They will be the curious observers just sitting and watching and scribbling and assembling an audit of the blindingly obvious, the blisteringly powerful and the frustratingly determined.

There's only everything to gain by doing this. The upside is everywhere. The result of comparing what these folk find with what we thought upfront (Green & Red Frameworks) is almost guaranteed to shake us up. It will do that in countless ways - by creating valuable realities for us to face. Good and bad. Possible and ridicuous. Remember these people are our existing audiences. They are our customers.

This process is going to give us new truths. We still get to decide what next and what we to do about them. We can even include these people in what we do next. As we go and tackle each 'red box' they can be the judge of how much better our business now is. Turning red boxes to green.

Now that's a major step forward in achieving our dreams.

The Rest Of The Story - http://beta.myalbum.com/artofstrategy