Strategy Temple

I had the chance recently to organize a training for our junior Associates at a-connect. We were in the beautiful resort town of Wengen, Switzerland. As part of that training, we covered basic problem solving skills, including some key frameworks. Hopefully, some of these frameworks are also useful for internal strategists. You have probably worked on many PowerPoint presentations. And there always comes a point where you go: Oh no, I have ten pages of text in bullet points, I need something else, something a bit more graphic. So here we go, the first “framework of a week:”

I used this framework at an engagement last year with a leading non-profit organization active in the conservation space. The key element was to clarify everybody’s thinking around the fact that they really had three quite distinct types of activities, and we graphically displayed those as three pillars of a roman temple. All three are important for the foundation, and quite complementary. The foundation of the temple represents the organization’s core competencies and capabilities. And we displayed the mission and vision at the top.