Business Strategy on a Page

Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash

I’m a great believer in making work (and problems) visible. Over the years I’ve developed various tools — usually by combining different concepts.

Like this one where I combined Wardley Maps, Team Topologies, and Data Mesh into a strategy for data platforms.

In this post, I will present a simple model for a business strategy on a page by combining Lean problem-solving with some startup voodoo.

Context

There are a lot of single-page models out there. But most of these focus on conceptual models rather than the execution of strategy.

• Business Model Canvas — to visualize new business models.
• Lean Canvas–to describe a business model in a concise way.
• Wardley Maps–mapping the components of your value chain against their maturity, a great collaboration tool for discussing strategy.
• Lean A3 —structured approach for problem-solving

Each of these can play a role in defining the strategy for an organization but I find they all fall short when it comes to executing that strategy. They’re great at depicting a state, or discussing options but come up dry when it comes to organising people to act upon it.

What you need is a single page that becomes your primary tool for managing where you are going.

Dimensions of a Business

Drawing on the aforementioned canvases and concepts like Lean Startup, I typically decompose business down into four (arbitrary) dimensions.

1. Market — what problem are you trying to solve? who has that problem? how many of them are there? where are they? who are your competitors?
2. Product — what solution are you offering to that problem? what channels are you using to connect potential customers to the product? how are you offering it? how are you pricing it? what’s the feedback on your product?
3. People — who is your team? how are they organised? what are their roles? who is helping you deliver the product? who are your partners? how are you engaging with them?
4. Money — how are you making money? how are you spending it? what are your expenses and overheads? what are your targets? what is your strategy for leveraging a better return? what investment do you require?

Think of these as one axis of your business strategy.

You can already see the benefit of considering each of these in turn. In various businesses I’ve used the market → product → people → money mantra to conduct quick reviews of the situation and determine strategy.

Business as a Problem

I’m also a student of Lean, or the Toyota Way.

One key concept of Lean is the importance of structured problem solving. And the heart of business is the problem of making money.

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Lean uses a structured method of solving problems which breaks down like this:

1. Current state — where are you now? what do you know? what data do you have to prove this?
2. Target State — where do you want to be? what would your ideal state be? what would the next step towards that look like?
3. Problem or Gap Analysis (and root cause) — compare your current state to ideal and identify the gap. What is holding you back from reaching that target state? Why is that happening? (If you want to be methodical do a root-cause analysis using “5-whys” to understand the causes)
4. Experiments — what do you think you could do to close the gap, or remove one of the causes? If you pursue that action, what do you think will happen? What does success look like? What will the future look like?
5. Actions — who is going to perform the experiment and collect the results? Who is responsible for implementing the change? When will it be done by?

This problem solving process is normally embodied and taught through the use of a Lean A3 diagram. Using an A3 page to depict the process helps leaders expose their thinking process and develop it further.

This will become the second axis of your business strategy.

Combining the Axes

Now we have two different axes:

• The Dimensions of a Business — market → product → people → money
• And a problem solving process — current state → target state → problem/gap → experiments → actions.

If you combine the dimensions of the business with a problem solving process you get the following matrix:

Combining dimensions of a business with lean problem solving

For each of the domains or dimensions you can work through a structured conversation around problem solving, that will conclude with a series of actions.

An Worked Example

In the following example a company has four product lines: A,B,C and D.

How do you use it?

A model or tool is only as valuable as the utility it gives.

If it sits on a shelf, it’s worthless.

That’s why this model is simple enough to be used every time you discuss business strategy.

At a major strategic checkpoint you can review the whole document from Market through to Money and confirm your strategy for the period ahead. For a minor checkpoint, say monthly, you can review the actions and see where you stand.

• Has everything been completed? If not, why not?
• Have you learnt anything from your experiment that suggets you should change your strategy?
• If an experiment was successful what are you doing to make it part of your standard work, embedding it in the organisation’s practices?