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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

So last week I shared the most popular frameworks to simplify the hardest decisions for your business.

I got a bunch of replies saying “Great frameworks. But how did you use them?”

So this week, you’ll hear how we used these decision frameworks to help a $1B consulting firm double their revenue.

This is for you if:
• You want to see a live example of how we create a strategy
• You want guidance to build your own strategy (for your product or service)

You’ll get an overview of what we actually did and my nerdy side rants about what we should have done differently (so you can avoid our mistakes).

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

Why would a strategy firm, bring in a strategy firm, to do their strategy?

Some quick context on the business:

I can’t say the name, but this firm gives consulting services to Fortune 500s in the Financial Space.

Banks. FinTechs. Hedge Funds etc.

Their services cross all 3 parts of the strategy lifecycle:
1) Strategy: “Deciding what do to.”
2) Planning: “How do you make it a reality.”
3) Execution: “Make it a reality.”

The client has a strategy group, but didn’t want their group to be biased with internal politics. So they brought us in.

It’s more common than you think.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Most people confuse strategy and planning. A plan is not a strategy. A goal is not a strategy. But that’s a topic for another time.

So what did we actually do?

We built their strategy. We helped them:
• Clarify their goal
• Decide where to focus (customers, services, industry, geographies)
• Decide their competitive advantage in each focus areas
• Figure out what to build/buy to make it a reality

To do that, we use the Strategic Choice Cascade framework (here’s the visual):

Note: for this project we focused on the first 4 boxes and did not cover management systems.

Why?

Management systems are reporting and rewards to incentivize everyone to keep the strategy alive. In practice, we tend to push it to the planning stage.

Before we start the Cascade, we need clarity on the problem

What’s the guardrails? What’s the goal? What are we NOT doing?

These questions are critical because every decision involves trade-offs. More of one thing is always giving up something else.

So there’s 100s of ways to double their revenue. We need to choose the trade-offs that work for THEIR goals.

Their goals:
• Increase annual U.S. revenue by $1B by 2025
• Become trusted advisor to the C-Suites

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
I don’t think we defined the problem as clearly as we should.

Why?

We spent A LOT of time in this stage debating how much focus we put on the “trusted advisor.” Politics got in the way.

Half the clients wanted to focus on providing strategy services. Half wanted to focus on execution. So the client asked to keep it vague to save the politics.

And then we shifted to filling out the Cascade.

For this project we focused on the first 4 boxes in the Cascade framework.

I’ll walk you through what we did to complete each box (and a nerdy side rant to tell you what worked/what didn’t).

Box 1) Aspiration

Your aspiration answers the question: “who do you want to become?”

This needs to be translated into measurable, time-bound goals.

Usually they’re too vague and just serve to motivate people.

Here’s some aspiration examples collected by Roger Martin:

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
I don’t remember the specific aspiration we used. Probably because I’m not convinced on the benefit of this style of aspiration for strategy.

Most aspirations tend to be hard to translate to something actionable.

Instead, I’d rather use this first box to get specific on:
• What problem are we solving?
• What metrics do we hit for success?
• What are we NOT doing?

I spent a few years in execution too, so I need strategies to be actionable.

Box 2) Where to Play

The 2nd box combined with “How to Win” is the core of your strategy.

Where to Play tells you where you focus:
• Products/services?
• Geographies?
• Customers?
• Channels?

For this project, we looked at markets that were:
• Growing fast
• Strongest customer demands (from customer interviews)
• Less things we need to build/buy to enter the market

We decided to expand their offerings into strategy, planning, and execution services for US-based Wealth Management firms for Fortune 500s.

Then we moved on to figuring out our competitive advantage in that space.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Always choose where you’ll play and your competitive advantage together.

We chose them separately for this project, but that’s not the best way to do it.

Instead it’s an iterative process:
Choose an opportunity. Ask what competitive advantage can I match with it?

If it’s not a strong advantage, tweak the opportunity until the strong advantage is possible.

It’s a back and forth process. The opportunity + your advantage is what goes on your list.

Box 3) How to Win

Your competitive advantage just means: which set of activities will you do differently to create more value for customers than competitors.

It’s the activities that your rivals can’t or won’t do.

We looked at ways the client was winning today. Spoke with Wealth Management experts to see what customers valued. And what competitors weren’t offering today.

We decided to help them win by:
Talent:
They had talent known to be the top experts in their field. Competitors don’t have access to them.

Partnerships:
They had exclusive partnerships with vendors that gave them an advantage in what offers we could create.

C-Suite relationships:
C-suites at certain companies had them as their trusted advisor. We’d focus on those companies.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
The more specific you are on the problem you’re solving, the easier this section becomes.

The strategy vs execution politics made finding the advantage harder since our problem was more vague.

Box 4) Capabilities

Okay, “Capabilities” is a big word but it just means:
“what things do you need to make this a reality?”

So to explain this, think of your business as if it were a car, “Capabilities” are what you need to drive the car.

There’s 3 categories of capabilities: People, Processes, Tech.

Here’s some examples of what you need for our car analogy:

1. People:
A person trained to drive. Knowledge of the road. Know how that specific car works.

2. Processes:
Directions. Rules for passengers + drivers. Passengers aware the car is leaving.

3. Tech:
Tires. Steering wheel. Seats.

So here’s what we did with our client.

We came up with a list of NEW things that we need. Then compared that list to what we already had.

And said - “If we want to start in wealth management, how much time + money do we spend to create the capabilities?”

Real examples from our client:

1. Thought leadership:
Writing content to get customers to see our expert perspectives.

2. Talent:
Hire partners with specific WM knowledge. Train consultants.

3. Assets:
Databases. Software.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
I like how we did capabilities on this project. No complaint.

So what happened?

The client agreed on entering the Wealth Management market!

So we moved to the planning stage to figure out how we make the strategy a reality.

And that’s it!

Feel free to reply with any questions you have. I read every email.

Also, let me know: did you find the nerdy side rants helpful or distracting?

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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