Strategy Sprint Creates Momentum

Use a Strategy Sprint to Create Momentum for Growth

We’ve developed a process to move from ideas to action in about 8 weeks. If you’re not sure how to grow your business, improve performance, or capitalize on disruptive forces, the strategy sprint will guide you to the answers.   

The key to success is having a solid plan and carrying it out effectively.  The strategy sprint creates the foundation for both.  

But, a plan that sits on the shelf is not our goal.  Instead, we provide an experience that energizes, strategic options that are impactful, and support through the planning stage to results.  This is something you and your team will enjoy—really. 

Strategy doesn’t need to be onerous.  It’s a balance of creative and analytical work. It’s a simple concept really— know where you are, envision where you want to go, and identify the right steps to get there. The strategy sprint is also a simple idea. It applies the 80-20 rule and is designed to ‘hit the high points’ while getting you to the finish line quickly.  (Saying yes to this, means you’ll actually get this off your to-do list this year!)

It’s an efficient, yet systemic way to turn ideas into action.  We use it to identify strategic objectives based on your strengths, your customers, and the market. Then we prototype simple ways to test feasibility and impact. Finally, we help you set up accountability and progress measures.   The process is built around our Business Model Blueprint and techniques we’ve borrowed from the field of human-centered design.  

Strategy should be a pro-active response to what’s going on in the business and in the market. Goodness knows, there’s been lot of change effecting both arenas, and this will only increase as technology becomes more complex and influential, and as customer expectations continue to evolve. Because of this, businesses need to pause regularly for a strategic assessment and adjustment.

Better yet, they need a strategy blueprint that is constantly syncing up with reality in and outside the business.  The sprint not only provides strategic options and implementation readiness, it will teach companies some of the techniques they can use to make their organizations slightly more agile and responsive in the future. 

How clients benefit:

·       Uncovering new possibilities for new revenue, new customers or internal efficiencies

·       Objective insights about the unmet needs and preferences of customers, which can be used to improve or expand products and services

·       A collaborative experience to energize the team, create consensus and communicate the big picture

·       Practices that help improve profitability while also improving stakeholder impact

·       Testing ideas for feasibility and effectiveness before investing resources and time

·       Hands-on support for implementation, if desired

The strategy sprint is smart and simple.  It brings together our collective knowledge about strategy, innovation and organizational change.  It addresses the negative attributes of traditional strategic planning, which can feel impractical, lengthy and resource-intensive.

Closing the gap between today’s reality and tomorrow’s possibilities is about seeing things others don’t yet see, and managing a strategy that fully leverages your competencies and capacity.  

If you want to learn how the process could be applied to your business, drop us an email, or just set up an appointment for a quick call with our Chief Strategist and Founder, Jen Reiner.

Prune for Good Growth

This year I took on the responsibility for pruning our azalea bushes.  My husband has been dedicated to this since we bought the house over 15 years ago.  The offer was part of his Father’s Day gift.  Little did I realize how much I’d enjoy it and that I’d turn the task into a blog post.

I know a little about pruning, but there’s a reason this was my first time (unsupervised). I had some guideposts running through my head. Once I noticed the relevance to business growth, more metaphors started flowing.  This is an unrefined list of some of the questions and observations running through my mind while pruning the azaleas and boxwoods.   PS… no guarantees on how things will turn out. We’ll see, in the next few months.  

• This has gotten too big and out of shape!
• Where do I want to promote growth?  Cut here. Make space.
• Stand back to see the big picture.
• It’s easy to cut off the outer stems that are protruding above the surface. But you    
    might not want a smooth surface full of conformity.
• Sometimes you screw up and cut off a good one.
• When it’s a daunting job, take breaks. It’s tedious work and you need fresh eyes and
    energy.
• Is this piece adding value and helping us grow in the right direction?
• Hard to choose which ones get to live and which are cut off—especially when they
    all look like they are doing equal work.  Which one is in the right position to be a
   benefit?
• Go back and forth from underneath at the trunk and outside from a few feet away.
• You don’t want big branches growing at the end of small twigs.
• You’ve got to cut off the suckers.
• Old systems get messy. Lots of legacy branches going this way and that.
• Sometimes you create some ugly exposed spots.
• It’s easy to see all the dead twigs when you lift up the surface branches.

Good luck on your pruning projects!  Let me know if you need some help.