Design an adaptive strategy that articulates your core beliefs, maps your competitive ecosystem, defines your unique position, and creates a dynamic execution rhythm to thrive in changing markets.

Strategy Design is your playbook for turning chaos into clarity! It combines:

• 🧠 Soul-Searching (What do we stand for?)
• 🗺️ Ecosystem Cartography (Mapping the "Corporate Forest" of competitors, disruptors, and resources)
• 🎯 Position Crafting (Finding your unique spot in the jungle)
• 🔄 Adaptive Rhythm (Building a strategy heartbeat that keeps pace with change)

| Benefit | Outcome |
|---------|---------|
| ✨ Purpose Power | Stop drifting! Define your legacy and rally your team. |
| 🧭 Competitive Clarity | See hidden threats/opportunities (like spotting 🐯 in the forest!). |
| 🚀 Dynamic Adaptation | Pivot faster than startups and outmaneuver giants. |
| 🔋 Energy Alignment | Stop fighting momentum—ride your organization’s natural enthusiasm. |

❓ Key Questions

• 🌍 What community impact do we create?
• 📈 What development opportunities do we provide?
• 🔓 What autonomy do we enable?
• ✨ What positive influence do we have?
• 🏛️ What legacy are we creating?

🗺️ Map Ecosystem

Purpose: Understand competitive landscape and identify strategic opportunities.

📋 Preparation

• 🔍 Prepare: Collect competitor analysis, market research, customer journey maps, and industry trend reports
• 🗺️ Map current ecosystem using the Corporate Forest metaphor
• 📊 Identify landscape characteristics and competitive positioning
• 🔄 Analyse movement patterns and emerging opportunities

🎯 Outcomes: Comprehensive ecosystem map and competitive positioning analysis.

🌲 The Corporate Forest

Apply the Corporate Forest metaphor to understand your competitive landscape through multiple interconnected layers. Add or extend the metaphor as needed:

🏢 Companies

• 🌳 Giant Oak: Dominant incumbent (Amazon, Microsoft, Woolworths)
• 🌲 Fast Redwood: Rising challenger (Tesla, TikTok, Shopify)
• 🍁 Maple Tree: Adaptable player that changes strategies seasonally
• 🌸 Dogwood: Specialised niche player with premium offerings
• 🌻 Wildflowers: Fast-growing startups (most die, few survive)
• 🌿 Ferns: Service providers/consultants

🤝 Relationship

• 🐝 Bees: Loyal customers who pollinate/spread word
• 🐦 Birds: Big customers who can carry you to new markets
• 🍄 Mushrooms: Investors/VCs (feed on dead companies, help new growth)

⚡ Disruptors

• 🌿 Invasive Kudzu: Disruptors that change everything
• 🔥 Fire: Economic crashes/major disruptions
• 🌴 Strangler Fig: Platform businesses (starts small, eventually dominates)

🌱 Resources

• ☀️ Revenue (Sunlight): Customer attention/market share
• 🌧️ Market Awareness (Rainfall): Brand visibility distribution
• 🌱 Soil Quality: Talent, capital, strategic assets

🤔 Hypothesise your position

• 📍 Where are you in the forest? (e.g. Giant Oak, Fern etc)
• 🔧 What leverage do you have access to?
• 📦 What resources do you need?

🎯 Refine Position

Purpose: Define where in the competitive landscape the organisation will play and determine the strategic capabilities required for success.

📋 Preparation

Purpose: Define where in the competitive landscape you will play.

🎯 Outcomes: Identify and validate strategic opportunities based on your positioning.

🧪 Strategic Position Testing Framework

Before committing to a strategic position, stress-test your position using at least three of the options below:

🔄 Work Backwards - Reverse Engineering Success

Start with desired outcome, trace prerequisites and milestones needed to achieve it

• Netflix 2007: "Own content creation by 2020" → invest in data analytics → understand viewing patterns → fund original series
• Tesla: "Mass market EVs by 2025" → build battery gigafactory → develop Model 3 → prove luxury market first with Model S

🚀 Application: Define your 5-year strategic aim, then map the specific capabilities, partnerships, and milestones required

🔀 Role Reversal - Flipping Stakeholder Relationships

Challenge traditional roles to uncover new business model possibilities

• Customer-Supplier Flip: "What if our customers were our suppliers?" → Airbnb (guests become hosts), YouTube (viewers become creators)
• Competitor-Partner Flip: "What if our competitors were our partners?" → Apple Pay (banks become distribution channels), Spotify (labels become content partners)

🚀 Application: Map your key stakeholders and explore what happens when you reverse each relationship.

🌐 Industry Borrowing - Cross-Pollination Strategy

Apply successful patterns from unrelated domains to your sector

• Banking adopts Gaming: Gamification, levels, achievements, progress bars for financial goals
• Healthcare adopts Hospitality: Ritz-Carlton patient experience protocols, concierge medicine models

🚀 Application: Identify 3 industries you admire and explore how their core strategies could transform your approach

🎯 Have-It-All Strategy - Eliminating False Trade-offs

Search for positions that deliver multiple benefits simultaneously rather than forcing trade-offs

• Amazon: Low prices AND fast delivery AND wide selection (platform economics avoid usual retail trade-offs)
• Patagonia: Premium pricing AND environmental mission AND customer loyalty (values alignment eliminates price sensitivity)

🚀 Application: List your assumed trade-offs and challenge each one - what would make them false choices?

📏 Boundary Questions - Organisational Scope Challenge

Challenge what your organisation includes, excludes, and why

• "Why do we manufacture when we could orchestrate?" → Nike (design/marketing), Uber (mobility without cars)
• "Why do we serve this customer segment but not that one?" → Stripe (developers first, then enterprises), Tesla (luxury first, then mass market)

🚀 Application: Question every aspect of your current business model - what if you did the opposite?

👀 Attention Audit - Leadership Focus Reality Check

Track where leadership focus actually goes versus stated strategic priorities

• CEO Calendar Mismatch: 60% internal meetings, 40% customer/market → strategic priority claims "customer-first"
• Board Meeting Disconnect: 80% financial review, 20% future growth → strategic goal is "digital transformation"

🚀 Application: Audit leadership calendars, meeting agendas, and resource allocation against strategic priorities

⚡ Energy Mapping - Following Organisational Momentum

Follow where organisational enthusiasm naturally flows to find strategic momentum

• Engineer Enthusiasm: Team gravitates toward AI projects → pivot from consulting to AI-powered products
• Sales Energy: Team excited about international prospects → geographic expansion becomes growth vector

🚀 Application: Map where your organisation's energy naturally flows and align strategy with momentum

🚫 Obviously Bad Ideas - Competitive Avoidance Analysis

Catalogue what competitors do that you deliberately avoid and examine why

• Southwest Airlines: "We don't do assigned seating, meal service, or hub-and-spoke routing"
• Tesla: "We don't do dealers, advertising, or annual model refreshes"

🚀 Application: List what you deliberately don't do and explore whether these "bad ideas" could become strategic advantages

🔄 Strategic Archetype Flip - Fundamental Stance Change

Fundamentally change your organisational stance and competitive approach

• From Defender to Prospector: IBM (mainframes → cloud services), Disney (theme parks → streaming platforms)
• From Analyser to Prospector: Microsoft (software licensing → cloud-first innovation), Amazon (books → everything platform)

🚀 Application: Identify your current strategic archetype and explore what a fundamental flip would enable

✅ Validate Intent

Testing your position in the corporate forest will define the constraints and opportunities to succeed, or highlight the assumptions that require further validation. Then define what needs to be communicated.

🧭 Strategic Direction:

• 🤔 Why is this the strategy?
• 📍 What is the direction and plan?

🚧 Boundary Conditions:

• ⚖️ What is necessary to maintain coherent progress within the company?
• 🛡️ What do we refuse to lose in order to achieve the strategy?

🧪 Assumption Testing

Establish a catalogue of assumptions, aggressively test them to sharpen your strategy.

📝 Template: "If [specific action], then [measurable outcome] will occur, because [underlying belief]."

📚 Examples:

• "If we launch freemium, then we'll acquire 1,000 users in 90 days, because 73% show price sensitivity."
• "If we partner with distributors, then we'll reduce acquisition costs by 40%, because direct sales requires unaffordable field teams."

🔄 Strategic Cadence

Purpose: Establish rhythm for strategic design, execution, and adaptation.

📅 Strategic Cycle Design

🎯 Direction Setting (5-year)

• Define core belief system and societal role
• Set foundational strategic expeditions
• 🔗 Integrate: Capital planning, board retreats, long-term budgets

🎨 Strategy Design (Annual)

• Review and adjust strategic expeditions
• Maintain directional consistency while adapting
• 🔗 Integrate: Annual budget planning, performance reviews, board calendar

📋 Strategic Planning (Quarterly)

• Set measurable objectives and key results
• Review feedback and market changes
• 🔗 Integrate: QBRs, budget reviews, performance cycles

📊 Results Measurement (Monthly)

• Track progress and inform interventions
• Forecast achievement probability
• 🔗 Integrate: Financial reporting, operational reviews, management meetings

🚀 Next Steps

• ⚙️ Customise cycle timing to match organisational capabilities
• 📈 Implement measurement systems leveraging existing infrastructure
• 🏛️ Establish governance protocols integrating with existing management processes