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The Strategy Team

Strategy Development

Continuous Improvement of Innovation Management 

The Strategy Team

As shown in the adjacent figure, the strategy team consists of three types of members:

• The Management Team
• A Coordinator from the business
• A Process Leader

The owner of the integrated set of business and innovation strategies is the General Manager. Each functional head owns his strategy along with the General Manager. Functional heads may include members of their organizations. Selected customers and suppliers may be included too.

The Coordinator assists the team in gathering data, scheduling working sessions, and documenting and distributing results. The Coordinator also receives experiential training as a Process Leader, so that the Management Team can become self-sufficient in subsequently refining and executing the integrated strategies. The Coordinator may be a functional head. The technology/engineering head often serves first in this role.

The Process Leader is an expert in creative problem solving, since strategy development is a creative process. Robust Innovations Inc. provides this individual for the initial creation of the integrated strategies.

A comprehensive strategy is best done over a 2-3 month period. It is fact based and thoroughly addresses all of the items listed on the table. Return To Top

Strategy Development

Robust Innovations uses a “process approach” to strategy. The general Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process of Dr. Min Basadur¹ has been structured specifically for strategy development.

Robust Innovations’ Process Leader guides the management team around the structured CPS process shown at the right. Before the first planning session, he meets with the General Manager to explain the overall process and to agree on a "starting problem."

Session #1 begins with a statement by the General Manager of the “starting problem” that he expects the strategy to resolve. As the team proceeds clockwise, the starting problem may be modified or a better problem may be chosen. This is normal. The process is robust and allows the team to evaluate multiple candidates.

The team deals with a multiplicity of facts in all segments of the CPS process. However, it is imperative that the “Business Climate Description” be based on facts and that the team take the time (1) to understand the facts surrounding the business and (2) to agree on a critical subset of facts that the integrated strategies must address. This requires patience by the team, as there is a natural tendency to jump to conclusions. A key role of the Process Leader is to assure proper concentration on facts.

The adjacent figure shows an expansion of the “Business Climate Segment”. Within the sub-segments, the Process Leader uses unique fact-finding exercises to help extract vital information.

One exercise deduces “perceived strategies” of competitors and then explores appropriate responses. A second generates a Core Competence Scorecard. It puts core competencies in priority order and scores each versus competitive and world-class benchmarks. A third spells out the elements of the organization’s current culture. Another systematically searches for relevant applications of new technologies.  The Process Leader guides the team through these exercises and helps it reach agreement on salient facts. After hundreds of facts are identified, discussed, and understood, the team converges on a set of 20-30 critical facts that the integrated strategies must address.

 The symbol <|> means that the team systematically diverges in each sub-segments and then converges on a critical subset of facts. The Process Leader separates the divergent and convergent processes.

Typically, a two day session is needed to complete the first quadrant.  At that point, the team will be tired from the intense exchange of information. Robust Innovations recommends a break of several weeks before proceeding to quadrant #2.

Session #2 (typically 1.5 days) focuses the team on the “Management Charge & Strategic Objectives” segment of the CPS process. The deliverables from this session are three-fold:

• A Management Charge That Clearly Communicates The Direction Of The Business
• 3-5 Strategic Objectives To Ensure Accomplishment Of The Management Charge
• A Plan To Engage The Entire Business In Generating Projects Ideas To Accomplish Objectives

The accompanying figure shows the problems solving steps that the team will address to deliver these results.

The Process Leader warms up the team by reviewing the original problem statement and the critical facts from Session #1. He then guides the team in brainstorming the expected challenges in solving the problem in view of the critical facts. After 50-100 challenges are identified, the team converges on 5 -10 top challenges.

The next step develops a challenge map for the business. The Process Leader constructs the map on a large wall to allow for clarity and for the addition of new challenges that the mapping process evokes.  Challenges are stated in “How Might We (HMW)…” format and explicitly linked.  The map is constructing by asking “Why?” and “What’s Stopping?” relative to each challenge.

As an example, the map below was done for the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Department of a major university (double click on image to see a legible copy and then expand to regular size). The original problem, or challenge, shown in yellow at the top of the map qualifies as the Management Charge. All of the challenges beneath it must be overcome to have a robust solution. In this case, the team decided that a good first step would be to address the challenge: HMW Identify Needs of Mutual Interest and Concerns. This strategic objective was then addressed by the entire department.

For a business, the challenge map will have a similar appearance. High on the map will be a challenge that the team agrees will be the Management Charge, after appropriate rewording. The team then chooses no more than 5 lower-level challenges and states these as strategic objectives for the business.

Session #2 concludes with the preparation of a communication package for the General Manager to use to engage the entire business. It includes: 

• The challenge map

• A request for preliminary descriptions of projects (new and existing) that will contribute to achieving strategic objectives

• A one-page project description form to collect essential data

• Weighted criteria for ranking preliminary project plans

• A first-cut Policy Deployment Matrix for those businesses that use this "lean" planning tool

• A strategic planning schedule that shows due dates for receipt of inputs

Generation and documentation of project ideas generally takes about three weeks. The Coordinator receives data in specified format and summarizes it for the Management Team’s use in Sessions #3. Thus, the “Project Idea Generation” segment of Structured CPS Process occurs mostly outside of the planning meetings. Of course, there will be key ideas that surfaced during sessions #1 and #2. Project description responsibility for these will be pre-assigned,

The “Project Idea Generation” segment is managed by the Coordinator with assistance from Robust Innovations. Preliminary project descriptions are collected and clarified. There may be hundreds of these, so data are summarized in a worksheet, provided by Robust Innovations, that allows easy sorting by multiple criteria.

“Project Idea Generation” segment typically consumes a month. This sustains momentum of the planning process while allowing time for preparing summaries of the information received.

Session #3 usually requires about 1.5 days. With reference to the Structured CPS Process, this session completes three segments:

• Project Selection
• Project Planning and Budgeting
• Plan Finalization

Session #3 proceeds quickly. Functional heads, or their designees, review preliminary project plans and respond to questions. The Management Team does the following:

• Associates each proposed project with one or more of the strategic objectives
• Applies the pre-defined scoring system to rank the projects
• Continually reviews funding requested versus funding available.
• Selects a portfolio of the high ranking projects that can be funded
• Requests detailed project plans for the selected projects
• Communicates results directly to each team or individual that proposed a project
• Establishes review requirements and a review schedule.

After all proposals are reviewed, the team assures that high ranking proposals are available that:

• Support each of the strategic objectives
• Meet desired distribution of projects among incremental, distinctive, and breakthrough categories
• Are well distributed among the business’ Innovation Process (See Innovation Process Link).
• Have project budgets balanced with multi-year innovation investments budgets planned for the business (investment plan adjustments are frequently made.)

Most of this work can be done directly by the team. Robust Innovations provides proven forms and software for managing the data efficiently. No more than two days should be required. Return To Top

Continuous Improvement Of Innovation Management

Development of the integrated strategy is the most critical responsibility of the Management Team in the Management of Innovation. However, the involvement must not stop there. The team should be continually involved in maintaining customer focus, proactively managing the culture of the business, making decisions about the movement of projects through the innovation process, assuring the required expertise to accomplish objectives, etc.

Management Teams in highly successful businesses continually improve their performance in executing their innovation responsibilities. Robust Innovations offers a means for a Management Team (1) to assess its performance and (2) specify areas for improvement. This is accomplished through an assessment matrix that measures Innovation Management Capability Levels. As an example, the following chart shows the capability level profile for a well-performing business.  

In this example, the “blue” bars show the capability levels that the team assigned for each of the innovation elements. The levels were determined by assessing whether the team used innovation practices appropriate to the different levels. “Yellow” indicates opportunities for improvement.

This team decided to focus on raising its capability levels for two elements:

• Innovation Culture;
• Innovation Processes.

For innovation culture improvement, it developed a project plan, staffed by the management team. For improvement of Innovation Process capability level, the team developed an action plan to engage different members of the management team in critical processes. The team also agreed to reassess its Innovation Management Capability Levels on a periodic basis.

Completion of the assessment typical takes 1.5 to 2 days.

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¹Dr. Min Basadur is a Professor of Innovation in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University and is the founder of Basadur Applied Creativity.