Playing to Win Strategy Offsite for a Financial Services Company in the Energy Industry
FUSE co-founder Erkan Kadir guided the C-suite and executive leadership team of a financial services company in the energy industry through a three-day strategy offsite in Golden, Colorado. The company's core invoicing product was under attack from established players and startups, and its leaders faced a decision that could set the company's direction for years: keep charging for invoices, or move to a free model and earn revenue from added services.
THE APPROACH
The CEO chose A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin's Playing to Win as the strategy process. Erkan teamed up with two fellow coaches to plan and facilitate the offsite. To prepare, they read the book cover to cover twice, checked that its evidence-based, iterative approach matched how they work, and ran the full process with a smaller team as a safe-to-fail rehearsal.
THE OFFSITE
- Day one: framing the choice as at least two options that could not both be true.
- Day two: generating a broad set of strategic possibilities, specifying what would have to be true for each one, identifying the conditions least likely to hold, and designing a valid test for each.
- Day three: the team presented its possibilities and tests.
- After the offsite: the team ran the tests, starting with the conditions it was least confident in, and compared the results with its conditions to make the choice.
OUTCOMES ACHIEVED
- The company decided to keep charging for invoices.
- It focused its added services on the energy industry alone and built a suite of industry-specific products that made the invoicing solution stickier.
- Revenue grew steadily over the next two years while the company protected its market share.
