Some of you might be familiar with my concept I call the “Strategy Sketch”.
It’s a method for laying down the key building blocks of any great strategy in the most succinct way possible.
I use it in my program, The Strategy Shortcut System, to help people distil their idea for rapid evaluation.
And I want to give it to you here too, so you can try it yourself.
Don’t overthink it, just fill in the blanks. But there are a couple of things I want you to look out for here:
- Can you actually provide an answer for each line? Clearly if there’s any absence or confusion over them, then you can quickly identify your immediate strategic problem.
- Do they all work as a unit? It’s one thing to put “something” in each section, but they must all add up to one thing. One idea, one argument, one thesis. Each line must follow the one that preceded it. Not just be a disjointed collection of parts.
Got that?
Here it is:
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The category: [insert well established industry category]
The unique belief: [insert differing opinion you have to competitors in that space]
The key innovation: [insert differentiated action you take because of the belief]
The new value: [insert new value created for the customer by the differentiated action]
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Let me just break this down a bit so you can really get it.
The category.
This is important because I believe to be bought, you need to be understood. And to be understood, you need a frame of reference by which people can categorise you.
Therefore you must choose a well-established category to pivot off, no matter how innovative you are.
Airbnb, for instance, was fundamentally understood as a “hotel alternative”, despite being nothing like hotels. But the idea of hotels gave people a starting point by which to interpret this weird new thing.
What’s great about this part of the equation is that it’s much more flexible than you think, and by changing your category you can change your leverage.
The unique belief
One of the main reasons you need a root category is because it informs your unique belief – since the belief has to be in opposition to some status quo.
Generally the unique belief is essentially a criticism of the category as it is, OR the introduction of a totally foreign idea that hasn’t been in the category before.
The crucial thing to remember here is that whatever the belief is, the opposite belief must also be valid. Otherwise it’s not really a unique belief, it’s just a truism.
Hotels, for instance, are an entirely valid and equally “good” alternative to Airbnb.
The key innovation
This is simply the way the unique belief becomes operationalised. It’s where you turn it from a notion into a hard form of differentiation.
The reason I now favour using the word “innovation” is because people tend to recognise it as a very “physical” word, and that is precisely what you need it to be if you actually want to drive results.
Otherwise strategy starts becoming a “claim game” where it’s all about trying to distinguish yourself through messaging rather than actually doing something.
Note: it doesn’t have to be just one innovation, it can be a whole bunch.
The new value
Then finally we have the value the innovation generates for the customer.
This is an incredibly common place to trip up, because what I see all the time is the creation of an innovation (good) in order to deliver what is ultimately the same value people were getting already (bad).
A differentiated method of coming up with an undifferentiated result FEELS like good strategy but it most certainly is not.
Remember, value is the thing people are buying, so if that bit isn’t different then all the other stuff doesn’t really matter. The first 3 steps are just a means to getting to step 4 – the pay dirt.
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This is the formula for generating demand and making money, it really is that simple.
Quick example using my own business to illustrate:
The category: Strategy consulting
The unique belief: 20% of strategy concepts deliver 80% of results, strategy is as much about motivation as it is about substance
The key innovation: No BS Strategy methodology, fast project speeds, productised strategy via Strategy Shortcut System, radical tonal and branding differences, social media marketing, etc.
The new value: Competitive advantage for broader non-corporate audience
There’s actually more to it than that, but the point is that just sketching it out should be pretty simple, and you should be able to point to each line and say:
- Yes, that is a fair answer
- Yes, this line logically follows the one before it
How to use it
If I were you I would treat this as a diagnostics tool.
See how far through it you can get before things start to fall apart.
Because it’s fairly sequential, most people will get a certain way down it, and then not have an answer to the next step. For example you might know your category, but have no unique belief. Or you might have a unique belief, but haven’t operationalised it. Or you might have an innovation, but you have no idea what new value it generates.
This shows you what you need to be thinking about.
An exception comes in cases where you know for a fact you have a key innovation, and you start from there.
- What category is this innovation applied to?
- What unique belief prompted it?
- What new value does it create in that category?
With either methodology you’re ending up in the same place.
Ultimately however, it should be pretty clear to you how crucial each of these pieces is – and if you can’t knit something fairly coherent together, then really you can’t complain about team confusion and poor performance!
It doesn’t have to be clever.
It just has to be there.
