Case #1 - Running Strategy Planning for 45 countries
One of the projects I’m the most proud of is definitely when I’ve run the first Global Strategy Planning at Bolt for over 45 countries and I’ll tell you how it all started!
1. I’ve run an Strategy Workshop for our African Leadership in Kenya when, in one summit I was gonna attend, the VP got a baby and I had to work with my manager on the content and agenda for it. I decided to focus on what I like doing the most: long-term planning and the team reaction was amazing. We’ve defined where we wanted to be in 5 years and what were the growth levers which would take us there
2. The word got around about this summit and other regions asked me to do the same there, and through the next 6-12 months I’ve run over 6 workshops with all Country Managers and regional leadership for all our 45 countries, which took to travel all over the world and get closer to the people that were actually making it all happen. The biggest challenge was how to provide support to teams that know far more of their own countries than I could ever, so there I realize it was less about sharing insights and more about empowering people with the right data, process and questions to make the right decisions. And, most importantly, to change the timeframe they were thinking: let’s not plane for next year but rather for the next 3 and think what are the opportunities that will make us grow by 5x – at least.
3. After running all of those workshops, I’ve realized with the teams that all of this strategy would not be set up by success if we were not centrally supporting and enabling it from HQ. So I’ve worked with the team on setting up the first ever global strategy planning at an €8bn euro company to help us define I) our long-term vision as a business ; II) Prioritize the opportunities that would get us there ; III) Set up a proper OKR framework to ensure that this strategy would be executed.
Moral of the story, I was not this insightful genius people expect a strategy person to be, I was rather an enabler of people who empowered them with data, processes and the right questions/frameworks. And, I’m pretty sure that by doing this the results are far better than I would have reached if I’ve only got into this standard “consultant mode” of putting up a deck and selling people a strategy from a pedestal full of buzzwords.
Strategy should be literal and never ambiguous, and we as strategists should never aim for having all the questions, just ensuring that the right people at the right time are focusing on the right things.