Strategy development for the core business: Future Forum

For many companies a great deal is currently at stake. Those who are too slow or wait too long fall behind. Several developments are challenging the economy at the same time, and each calls for its own response.

New competitors are pushing into markets and displacing established suppliers. Technological change gives advantages to those who know how to use it. Changing customer demands and customer expectations call for new, market-oriented offerings. Innovation raises the question of how a company arrives at new business models, products and services.

Added to this are demanding conditions. Companies have to engage quickly with changed conditions and adapt to them. They need a stance on sustainability and must meet international requirements, including those of BaFin. And they have to deal with the uncertainty coming from economic policy. Behind this lies the question of how to maintain or even expand one's own competitiveness.

There are organisations that are well set up for strategy work and pursue it successfully on an ongoing basis. As a systemic consultancy, however, transformis far more often encounters companies that are massively challenged strategically, and with unaccustomed intensity.

There are three typical reasons for this. Familiar markets that have been served successfully for many years simply collapse. The company's own range of services is not yet sufficiently geared to the pressure of digitalisation or sustainability. Or the dynamic behaviour of competitors and customers makes the previously successful positioning unattractive.

These companies are looking for guidance on what scope of strategic work and what focus is called for in their current situation and can sensibly be implemented. They also face the question of who can and should take responsibility for process and content, and how such a work process can be organised efficiently alongside demanding day-to-day business.

The Future Forum is a compact format for securing or realigning the core business. In it, companies develop new business areas and business models, arrive at innovative value propositions and service portfolios, and identify ways of winning new customer potential.

They adapt their positioning to the dynamics of the market, find a pragmatic sustainability strategy and define their path to securing future viability.

The result is more than a concept paper. It includes the necessary commitment of the managers and relevant key players. They have to take responsibility and put the strategic response into effective implementation.

The aspiration for the energy balance is: the process gives the company more energy than it takes. Even with major strategic challenges, a great deal can be achieved with the format. The process is tailored precisely to the needs of the company and carried out in such a way that neither day-to-day business nor individual participants suffer. Rather, the energy generated in the forum also has a direct effect on stabilisation measures in current day-to-day business.

A typical objection with an inhibiting effect is: “We don't have time.” Everyday operations are said to be so demanding that there is no energy left for strategy work. What is true is that strategic work needs an explicit time and space. But it neither has to wait nor overstretch people's time. A cleverly designed work process secures relevant contributions from valuable key players in manageable time windows.

The process has a threefold benefit. Three pillars support securing the future: a viable strategic perspective, a clear view of the organisational development needs and stabilisation of the current core business. All three build on the use of existing resources and core competencies.

The viable strategic perspective for realigning the core business is the obvious and central pillar. It is usually the focus of the results, because the forum is explicitly geared towards it. For transformis, this is the actual interpretation of strategy in the sense of a strategic picture of the future, which others also call a vision.

The clear view of the organisational development needs is the indispensable complementary pillar. New strategic options can rarely be opened up with the existing set of competencies and resources. A clear view of personnel, structural and financial development needs is required. Many call this route description strategy; transformis calls it organisational development.

Stabilisation of the current core business strengthens the starting position. It is an often underestimated pillar of securing the future and frequently a side effect of the forum. The future-oriented energy that arises from joint strategy work often produces insights that also strengthen the current positioning and can be implemented in the shorter term.

This contains an essential empowerment aspect for those involved: they experience how strategic work can become part of everyday leadership work.

The Future Forum runs in four stages: kick-off, impulse phase, work phase, and closing and transition phase. The process takes three to six months. The four phases are precisely designed and managed in an agile way.

The kick-off is about jointly acknowledging the need and pressure to act. All participants develop a shared understanding and jointly take responsibility for the work process. A compact workshop of about two hours in person is usual.

The impulse phase opens the “mindset” for strategic work. The participants process impulses from external partners and engage with dynamics, diversity of perspectives and the value of networking and development. Various input formats serve this purpose, remote or hybrid, each with a rapid debrief.

In the work phase, the impulses are brought out of the participants' heads into explicit discussion and turned into concrete ideas for strategic development. Impulses and ideas are enriched in order to think big and broad, then described and made concrete.

In the course of this, the ideas are evaluated and condensed very carefully, up to an explicit selection. The phase ends with the elaboration of strategic options. The format is a series of workshops over three to six months with about four to five precisely designed one-day workshops, supplemented by selective in-depth work in working groups.

In the closing and transition phase, the results are prepared for the intended strategic milestone. On this basis, decisions are brought about and follow-up work such as explorations or projects is described. Resonance sequences, validation work in working groups and communication formats are usual.

In practice, six characteristics speak for the format.

It is targeted. Only what enables the company to take the next necessary step is worked out. That may be a sound business case, but often it is something else at first, for example clarity in the management team about the strategic options. Working these out thoroughly and preparing them for a dialogue with investors or owners can be a sensible milestone towards which the forum is consistently geared.

It is pragmatic. About four to five precisely designed workshop sessions, enriched with carefully selected input sessions or focused in-depth work, form the solid basis.

It is compact. The format takes bottleneck periods into account. Nevertheless, the process can usually be carried out solidly within six months.

It is flexible. The steering committee can respond to new insights or changed conditions at any time. The work formats are adjusted to them at short notice, for maximum results orientation and efficiency in the process.

It is smart. Where expertise is genuinely lacking, it is brought in. Knowledge from trend and market research, research or associations, and if necessary also from suppliers or customers, is integrated efficiently and wisely.

It is collaborative. “Superficially together” does not work. From the kick-off onwards, the forum ensures that all participants internalise the sense of urgency and that at least the managers and key players make the commitment to the necessary strategic work.

Strategic work is not rocket science. Three premises determine whether it succeeds.

The first premise is the right focus. It needs to be clarified whether the emphasis is more on securing earnings or on growth, and in known, changing or new markets. It also needs to be clarified to what breadth and depth it helps to analyse trends and markets, to plan segmentations and to develop options.

Finally, it has to be decided whether a clear picture of the future is being sought or rather the path to achieving or securing a specific market position. Those who focus on the relevant questions early and choose the right tools save valuable energy in the process.

The second premise is to involve expertise on competencies and markets in a targeted way. Strategic work is not reserved for “designated strategists”. What matters is that external and internal expertise on markets and market conditions on the one hand, and on the organisation’s services and core competencies on the other, is brought in, as input and in the discussions. Strategic tasks have become complex. An organisation should meet this complexity with “system intelligence”.

The third premise is to translate insight directly into action. Strategic work processes must not have only the goal of insight in view. They must lead to those responsible in the company making sure that the insights are translated into consistent action. This assumption of responsibility must arise and be strengthened in the process.

A second inhibiting objection is: “We don’t have a strategy department.” First, the argument goes, someone would have to be hired or developed to take on the necessary work. It is true that the competence for strategic work is needed more than ever. Those who do not yet have it should develop it now.

However, strategic work can never sensibly be delegated to a so-called strategy department. Strategic challenges today are so complex that such a department should not tackle them alone in any case. The work process must ensure that relevant key players from different functional units are involved, with expertise on the market and on the organisational competencies.

If needed, the design of the strategy process can be handed over to external process experts. They run such a process just as well, often even better, because they benefit from broad experience.

Strategy forums must offer both a “creative space” and a “logic space”. On the one hand, free and visionary thinking and discussion are needed, encouraging impulses, ideas and options to be contributed with complete openness. On the other hand, a strongly structured working approach is needed at several points, because the interim results have to be critically assessed and prioritised or selected for further work.

There is a trade-off between variation and selection, and the selection can certainly be painful. When many ideas are on the table and only a small number can be pursued for capacity reasons, even favoured topics are held back for the time being. They are not lost, however: they go into a deliberately created store.

Four recommendations help with steering. First, work sequences and work locations should be deliberately aligned with whether the creative space or the logic space is needed. Second, the selection criteria should be chosen deliberately and decided explicitly together, so that the result can be supported by everyone involved.

Third, it pays to move to the meta level together when needed and to reflect on the necessary trade-off. Fourth, it helps to think iteratively in the agile sense and to view the future forum as a cycle. This makes it easy to enter follow-up cycles, and interim results already developed remain available.

Forums and their participants always have their own conditions, technical, spatial and personnel. Known preferences in communication culture should be taken into account. Helpful practices should not be dropped, however, simply because they are unfamiliar and not yet practised.

Those who want to bring together diverse perspectives must overcome barriers of time, place, language or culture where necessary. If obstacles are to be expected here, it is advisable to involve experienced facilitators who ensure productive work.

Those who expect depth and genuine involvement should be prepared for emotional discussions. Friction may arise and is often a useful catalyst. What matters then is experienced facilitation that channels the energy brought in into productive joint work.

From presentation software to the pinboard: the worlds of digital and analogue work can be merged well and used for their respective advantages. Whether digital or analogue, what matters is explicit dialogue.

The use of tailored canvas formats has proven very effective in the future forums supported by transformis. A canvas can easily be adapted to specific needs, so that the required breadth and depth of work can be guided in a well-structured way and carried out independently. It works well both digitally and on paper and is suitable for work processes with several working groups or workstations.

The visually supported structure provides orientation, while the flexible order of work allows the necessary freedom. As a rule, a completed canvas already serves as a documentation format for interim and final results, which keeps the work process efficient.

A third inhibiting objection is: “We cannot know what will happen.” The environment, it is said, is so dynamic that decisions can only be made under great uncertainty, and waiting seems the best alternative. It is true that many markets are highly dynamic and no one knows for sure how markets or individual players in them will develop.

Waiting is nevertheless the wrong conclusion. The task is to understand developments, including their dynamics or stability, to set the course for securing the future on this basis, and to sharpen and shape it step by step. Anything else slows the organisation down and reduces the necessary room for development. There is enough expertise in the market to turn uncertainty into well-founded hypotheses and to create the necessary confidence in decisions.

From a systemic perspective, the success of the process depends on three dimensions: the factual dimension, the social dimension and the time dimension. The interplay of the three is the so-called third mode, in which factual, social and time questions are worked on together.

In the factual dimension, the task is to identify the critical next milestone for the necessary strategy work and to focus on it as the objective of the forum. The breadth, depth and specific form of the strategic work are tailored to the starting situation and the framework conditions.

In the social dimension, the effective participation and assumption of responsibility of the leadership system and relevant key players must be ensured. The process is supported in such a way that the participants devote themselves to the matter together openly and seriously, and the joint work is not impaired by power games, tensions or uncertainties.

In the time dimension, planning distinguishes between net and gross. Net, the participants should invest as little time as possible but as much as necessary. Gross, the rhythm must productively support the necessary work steps and allow for reflection and, where appropriate, adjustment of the process plan along the way.

Professional process steering takes all three perspectives into account at the same time. In this way, it aligns the format to be both goal-oriented and resource-efficient.