Innate Strategies


>   As one of the world's top technology companies took on the "impossible" challenge of growing its global notebook supply chain from 10M to 30M units in 24 months, the management team realized that they didn't have adequate visibility into their operations and simply weren't certain if and how they would deliver.
  • from 100+ "critical" initiatives to 7 key initiatives
  • from siloed activities heading toward breakdown to alignment around precise, coordinated, rapid execution
  • from uncertainty and overwhelm to confidence and certainty that they could now execute with success


>   At one of the world's leading printer manufacturers, its leadership team was confronted by a huge reality gap. They saw that, despite being the market leader, their division was rapidly moving toward strategic obsolescence and a diminishing rate of return on their limited, but historically profitable, product portfolio. No one else in the organization was able, or wanted, to see that reality. And conflict about that would be disastrous to their organization's ability to execute on a new strategy.

By making that gap real for the leadership team and focusing their efforts on what to do about it, their organization went
  • from complacency about their market position to competitive urgency
  • from reliance on existing products to compelling innovation
  • from falling revenues and lower margins to a new strategy for product and revenue generation


>   A leading innovator of consumer electronics, in its efforts to extend its leadership in the digital music industry, was pursuing a path to achieving moderate market share, but not market leadership.

In working with the strategy team to see, think, and act differently about their challenge, they went
  • from a scattered, "best guess" marketing strategy to a targeted strategy with direct market and customer impact
  • from a short-term focus on revenue to focusing on deep, lasting market penetration based on the integration of revenue leadership, industry thought leadership and customer experience leadership


>   Leaders in business, the military, the social sector and the government in Guatemala were working harder and harder, hiring smarter and smarter people, and doing better and better projects but a critical metric – poverty – was getting worse and worse. So, what weren't they seeing?

As we showed them that symptoms are merely indicators of the real problem, they went
  • from seeing the problem as poverty to understanding that economic self-determination was the key issue to be solved
  • from conflict between the various interest groups in the country that looked personal (when it was really structural) to collective alignment around their goal
  • from 140 possible symptoms of the problem to 6 root causes for reversing the 40 year downward trend