It was important to reframe the task or, as Daley puts it, “to create a framework of what a strategy discussion is and isn’t. A strategy discussion is not an idea review. A strategy discussion is not a budget or a forecast review. A strategy discussion is how we are going to accomplish our growth objectives in the next three to five years. We really wanted to engage in a discussion.
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Deep consumer understanding is at the heart of the strategy discussion. To be effective, strategy must be rooted in a desire to meet user needs in a way that creates value for both the company and the consumer.
So we worked up a new process to begin in the fall of 2001. It was a radical change for all involved. Previously, a president would come into a review meeting with a lengthy PowerPoint presentation, which captured all the material that he or she wanted to share. The president would go through the deck, slide by slide, revealing the material to the mass audience in real time. We changed the meeting completely. It went from a formal presentation (by the business to management) to a dialogue focused on a very few critical strategic issues identified in advance. Whatever strategic issues the president wanted to discuss were delivered in writing in advance of the strategy review meeting. The senior team would review the submission and select the issues it wished to discuss (or propose alternative points of discussion).
In any organization, but especially in an organization as large as P&G, there needs to be a framework for organizing the strategy discussion.
We all ultimately want to find the strategy that is best for our business. Rather than asking individuals to find that answer for themselves and then fight it out, this approach enables the team to uncover the strongest option together. A standard process is characterized by arguments about what is true. By turning instead to exploring what would have to be true, teams go from battling one another to working together to explore ideas. Rather than attempting to bury real disagreements, this approach surfaces differences and resolves them, resulting in more-robust strategies and stronger commitment to them.
A long list of ‘things to do,’ often mislabelled as ‘strategies’ or ‘objectives,’ is not a strategy. It is just a list of things to do. Such lists usually grow out of planning meetings in which a wide variety of stakeholders make suggestions as to things they would like to see done. Rather than focus on a few important items, the group sweeps the whole day’s collection into the ‘strategic plan.