Global Strategic Studies Methodology and Outputs

Global Strategic's studies are built around a methodology developed by its Senior Fellow, Peter Keen, and applied over several decades in a number of the world's leading telecommunications firms, airlines, banks, manufacturers and high tech companies as well as nations and regions. This Catalyst methodology begins by providing a focused, fast and innovative analysis, of the client's business and competitive context over the coming 3-5 year horizon. This time frame is the natural one for strategic action; any major initiatives made today will take at least two years before they can be implemented and in our world of increasing volatility and uncertainty, scenarios and plans based on, say, 10-year futuristic scenarios are little more than guesses and hopes. Catalyst aims at helping our clients' position today for effective impact within this 3-5 year time window.

Our methodology is named Catalyst because we aim to help our clients help themselves: to be a literal "catalyst" for transformational change where we help fuel the innovation process. We begin our studies with a Business Scan. This reviews the client context in seven key areas:

Customer scan: What are the main trends among the customers of today that are relevant to the strategic opportunities and necessities of our client? Who are the customers of tomorrow and how do they differ in their characteristics, priorities and needs? What is driving customer choices of key providers?

Existing competitor scan: what is happening in the industry and which forces - de/reregulation, trade liberalization, technology, global talent sourcing and manufacturing and service innovations - will most determine competitive success? Where does competitive edge come from now and how will it change over the timeframe?

New competitor threat scan: As the last ten years of competitive innovation in telecommunications, hardware, software and services indicate, many of the most powerful competitors of tomorrow are either in adjacent industries, are startups, are specialists targeting a niche or even do not yet exist. Who will be the most powerful likely competitors of tomorrow?

Economic scan: How are revenue, capital, pricing and cost structures changing? What are the main resources and capabilities needed to avoid being caught in the growing commodity trap of price erosion, overcapacity, shortening product lifecycles and new global competition that marks more and more industries?

Partner scan: In a world where no major company can go it alone now, the choice of partners and the developing of relationships is as important a source of capabilities as in-house skills and resources. Who should be the partners of tomorrow?

Company ambition scan: What is the shared strategic intent of the client organization's leaders? What are they individually and collectively committed to achieving? What are their questions and concerns where Global can be a source of insight, information and analysis - a catalyst?

The result of the business scan is a set of recommendations as to the Business Imperatives that we believe should drive strategy and planning. Imperatives begin with the implicit statement "Regardless of how we do it, it is absolutely vital that we...."

Imperatives are not the same as strategy or as a business model, but are the drivers of them. We believe that too often organizations jump to strategy without being really clear as to the Imperatives that they should adopt to address the demands of a shifting competitive and economic context. The question that our studies aim to provide firm, innovative and practical answers to is thus "What are the absolute 'must do' Imperatives for our client to take the lead in driving growth and change?"

Typically, there are 5-7 such Imperatives. These become the base for what we term "ruthless prioritization". We see many organizations become overwhelmed by the multitude of priorities for market positioning, product and service development, research, organization, financial planning and so on. When everything is a urgent priority, then nothing is! The business gets overloaded with change management projects. Catalyst zeros in on the few Imperatives that must take precedence over everything else. It is in this sense that we speak of ruthless prioritization.

The Catalyst business scan is carried out over a 2-4 month period. One of the main principles of our work is that strategic studies should be focused and fast; lengthy research projects with highly detailed analysis and data are far less valuable to our clients than ones which capture the key Imperatives and then move on to address policy, strategic priorities, and organizational and technical platform needs. Our clients then move from Imperatives to Strategy to Implementation; Global provides its own recommendations as to the key issues and action agenda in achieving this.

Our scan draws on multiple sources: industry information, company information, trade and industry press, relevant academic studies, and interviews with experts as well as a "diagonal slice" of the client organization: by this we mean that we talk in detail with senior executives and planners, and also ensure that we get the perspectives of a small number of people across the business and up and down the organization. That typically includes research teams, key sales and marketing staff, HR and operations.

We focus our work on a top-down leadership plan for innovation and transformation, but ensure that we get the inputs of the people whose skills, knowledge and attitudes are critical in moving from top-down vision and strategy, to effective implementation and impact.

The outputs from our scan and analysis are generally in the form of a well-written 15-30 page Executive Agenda report that is concrete and provides "actionable" recommendations. We support this with 1-3 Executive Briefings, to groups selected by the client, typically the Board, the core leadership team and, in some instances, to a wider management group. We back up the Agenda report and Briefings with relevant additional technical, analytic and competitive reports that provide more detail.

A frequent follow-on to our Catalyst work are short, customized executive education programs to help mobilize the wider organization for action. In many instances, this is in the form of a Top 200, 2-3 day intense program to help senior managers and planners get the information directly, hear the leadership's priorities and Imperatives, carry out the brainstorming and make the commitments to aggressively lead business and organizational change at the grass-roots level.