Story=Strategy
Creativity: the Common Root of Strategy and Story
'What if' prompt to innovate
The two most important words in Strategy are “What If”. This is the prompt to conceive previously unimaginable options.
Take the case of the early budget airlines. Overcoming decades of traditional practices, they entertained the possibility of ‘What if we remove food (and liquor), magazines and movies from the free menu?”. And go on to develop a whole new dimension and market for flying on the cheap. This took courage. But more importantly, it took creative vision.
Hannibal, on wanting to surpirse his enemies, considered “what if I go OVER the alps?’. No surprise there, except for the Romans. Round 1 to Hannibal.
Then, what if I am a futuristic cop with my own phone on a wristwatch. That’s Dick Tracy from 1931. And telecommunication standard circa 2000.
Development of Strategic Thinking
The Team Creativity Workshop is ideal for senior managers and CXO leaders who constantly need to reinvent the organization to meet market challenge.
Strategic thinking requires leaders to:
- attain a macro view of the current situatioin
- generate wholly creative insight and initiative that is the basis for disruptive innovation
- analyse systemic responses to the creative initiative
- articulate this in a coherent plan that translates concept into execution for and by rank and file
This is oddly enough, the exact same process in developing an original story or script idea.
Industry benchmark of strategic training, like Blue Ocean, call for a systematic process of evaluating business value propositions: eliminate, reduce, enlarge, introduce new items. As long as business management gurus have mooted this, story tellers have used a similar approach to conceptualize new stories for bedtime stories or broadway.
In our Team Creativity Workshops, we will
- show partipants how to create original, compelling stories.
- show, during the review session, how these powerful techniques translate very well into coming up with a fresh outlook to business excellence and competitive advantage
- allow senior managers to identify critical industry players and trends and articulate possible scenarios and strategies through story which are ideal for communication