PTV© in Action - Tapping those untapped growth opportunities using an Experience Pool Portfolio (EPP) Framework

Our last week’s article definitely has created some buzz within the blogosphere– as we received quite a few follow-up questions (both by formal and informal means) from our readers – especially asking us to propose additional measures (on top of the CET index), to effectively gauge this customer centric vs. vision centric innovation dilemma. While we agree that the optimal number of additional measures would definitely help us in solving this dilemma effectively, it is important to highlight the fact, that too many measures, at times, could also lead us to faulty, out-of-context conclusions. With that said- if at all, we need to add any more measures, it would be in the area of measuring the nebulous emotional/ emerging experience expectations of the consumers - as this is one area, the traditional quantitative analytics fall short – partly because of the fact this space is filled with too many opposites.

Having said that, we quickly realized the fact that this dilemma, in a way, is also interconnected to another macro level dilemma within our Portfolio-Thread View (PTV©) called “Pull vs. Push value chain” as well. As it turns out, customer centric innovations, by and large are driven by the push (supply) value chain models, whereas, the vision centric innovations (or the glorified customer centric innovations) are driven by the pull (demand) value chain models – which made us to step back and solve these two macro level dilemmas together (i.e., CE vs. VE & Pull vs. Push) in a holistic manner within the larger PTV© context (with its six macro level dilemmas that were identified within our earlier PTV© blog). This holistic mindset, along with our “causal chain based opposing forces analysis” not only helped us to create few more additional measures (as identified in the picture at the top of the page), but also, resulted in the following value-add INSIGHT –

• While the push (or supply) side of the value chain has been continuously optimized by corporations for over 10+ years, the pull (or demand) side has been often overlooked– and so, bulk of the untapped (or hidden) growth opportunities are being buried deep within the pull side of the value chain only.

What do we mean by that? To better understand and comprehend this insight, let us step back and understand the foundational underpinnings of our “value conservation principle based PTV© view” using an inspirational analogy (if you allow me, let me, take a digression for a minute - and I promise you, that I will come back quickly to the key point of our article…)

• Imagine for a moment … A Poet was about to step out of his home for his inspirational walk in to the nature’s trail -like most poets of yester years like Wordsworth's of the world, did! As the Poet started opening the door, the whistling/whispering sound of the wind started welcoming him with its wonderful rhythm – which made him compelled to start a friendly conversation with the wind - “What’s your name?” The Poet asked. The Wind apparently started talking back “My name is love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, etc (all the emotional fruits/energy types!).” – the Poet was so captivated by the answer, and so, started asking his next question– “Where were you then yesterday this time?”. The intelligent wind quipped – “I was in your nostrils my friend, didn’t you notice me?”- Hearing this punch line back, the Poet’s interest level started going up again -and asked another follow-up question- “Where were you then, the day before?” The wind started imagining one step ahead of the Poet, and gently whispered back – “I was in between the zigzag lines of those Pampoo trees in your backyard producing those wonderful lullabies, my dear Poet”. Now the poet’s interest level started reaching newer heights and asked –“how about the day before that?” The wind apparently started answering back with a musical twist –“Guess what, my friend… I can run over 100 miles an hour, and so, with me being everywhere, anytime, believe it or not, I was flowing through those wonderful Krishna style flutes – that were being played within London’s symphonic orchestra!” Now the Poet started recognizing the fact that the wind was trying to act smart, and so, thought of asking a non-answerable question, thinking that it would end the conversation – “how about zillion years ago?. The wind quietly said – “don’t you know my friend – I was the one who was breathed by your creator in to your fore father’s (Adam’s) nostril to give him (and you) the life you are all treasuring now”. After hearing this insightful answer, the Poet got so humbled and started thanking God for His wonderful creation of nature and the wonderful inspirations that come along with it!”

Granted, it is an imaginative story – but the added inspiration within our context here is – like the wind energy, business value also revolves around our PTV© conservation cycle (within the four walls of the BSC perspectives along with its six dilemmas) as I had alluded in the picture of one of our earlier blogs (http://strategywithapurpose.blogspot.com/2011/01/portfolio-thread-view-ptv-in-action.html), and to be little more precise,

• As we can visually see in the PTV© cyclical picture, the intangible human intellectual capital energy (like the wind energy, in the form of capabilities) within the “Growth/Learning” perspective, first transforms itself in to a tangible asset value (in the form of P&S’s) within the “Value Chain” perspective – and then, those tangible assets gets interchanged with the “need state based experience pools” within the “Customer” perspective (creating the incremental value or cash-flow from outside growth opportunity sources) – which finally transforms itself in to the shareholder value in the “Financial” perspective – which again gets re-invested in the form of human intellectual capital energy (or capital/capabilities) – and the PTV© value conservation cycle keeps moving.

The key message here is that VALUE gets either increased (using value accelerators in the form of positive cash flow generating growth opportunities from an external source) or decreased (using value deaccelerators in the form of negative cash flows or bad business decisions) within the PTV© conservation cycle – very much like how PHYSICAL ENERGY gets accelerated/deaccelerated (from external energy sources) as part of the energy (or wind energy) transformation process. In other words, if we had to summarize - the single most important challenge facing corporations today, in our opinion is -

• IDENTIFYING, GUARDING and RESURRECTING (The IGR Challenge) those hidden value accelerators that are being buried deep within the pull side of the value chain in the form of a positive cash flow (i.e. value) generating growth opportunities.

This IGR challenge not only made us to start our gold rush journey of searching for those hidden treasures (sounds like the gold rush of the 19th century?) – but also, resulted in the following hypothesis -

• These “right to win” type hidden growth opportunities, happen to exist more on the pull side of the value chain – because, bulk of the unmet emotional/emerging consumer experiences are buried within the hearts and minds of the high-spend creative customers/consumers.

This does not mean that we need to ignore the push side altogether (which is more of functional or baseline experience focused) - rather, we need to balance both (i.e. pull and push value chains) to bring this “right to win” hypothesis to life. With that said, the key question that needs to be solved within this hypothesis is -

• What are those untapped, unmet, need state, based experience moments of your most profitable customers/consumers -and how fast you can, not only tap them, but also can fill those experience gaps with your P&S’s (or business models)much before your competitors could?

As we started answering this question– we quickly realized that we need to first re frame this untapped growth opportunity space using a “pull value chain” based market segmentation approach – given the fact traditional “push value chain” based demographic and/or behavior based market segmentation approaches, that worked well to quantify the traditional consumer segments, do not seem to work very well, to quantify the “pull value chain” based emotional/emerging experience moments. Part of the reason being is that –the traditional demographic/behavior based segmentation approaches are based on the rear-view mirror type historical data and so, it does not work very well in quantifying these futuristic emotional/emerging experience moments. Granted, the historical data, definitely is useful in identifying the unmet functional (or already fulfilled) experiences – however, in our opinion, it does not work well for quantifying the emotional/emerging experiences - and so it is time to try a different approach – called the “Pull-Push balanced Experience Pool Portfolio (hence forth called as EPP Framework)”.

Under this EPP framework, the traditional products and services (P&S’s) are redefined as Experience Enhancers - to better identify these untapped emotional/ emerging expectations in the form of experience pools (EP) and the corresponding unmet need-states (NS). Experience Pools are the groups of consumers that are grouped based on the futuristic emerging/emotional experience expectations of their needs (i.e. what part), including the rationale behind the decisions they make to meet those needs (i.e. why part), and the potential growth opportunities ( i.e. how part of discerning the growth rate variations within those groups). For those of us who have come from the data intensive analytics background – I perhaps could provide an OOS analogy to explain the differences between the traditional Market Segments and Experience Pools – it is the same difference between “Entities/ Tables” within Relational Schema vs. “Objects” within Object Oriented Schema(OOS). Along the similar lines, Need-States are the distinct set of “usage occasions” depicting how the choices made by the Experience Pools change depending upon the situation or usage occasions.

Once the experience pools and need-states are mapped as a matrix (5x5 matrix as identified in the picture at the top of the page), it helps us to perform the experience gap analysis to accurately size these “experience gap opportunities” in terms of dollars and volumes. Granted that these experience pools and the unmet need states vary from category to category – however, our analysis has shown that most of these macro experience pools and need states identified in our 5x5 matrix are common across most consumer focused P&S categories (whether it be consumer electronics experiences, content/video experiences, F&B experiences or non-durable experiences), as there is a need to solve/gauge these emerging unmet experience needs of the creative/high-spend consumers within all of these sectors, regardless of a specific category. However, please note that these experience pools and need states may have to be refined, should we get an opportunity work on an engagement for a client firm to identify the experience pools for a specific category. For the purposes of this blog, we strongly believe that our EPP framework (along with its 10 component level analysis sub-frameworks) - definitely help us to answer our hypothesis question with clarity, certainty and speed as identified in the picture at the top of the page

1. Experience pool (EP) analysis - arriving at the Experience Pools addressing the nebulous emotional/merging experience expectations as identified in the 5x5 matrix at the top of the page.

2. Need state (NS) analysis - arriving at the occasion based need states driving those experience pools as identified in the 5x5 matrix at the top of the page.

3. EPNS Gap Analysis – econometric analysis to identify the experience gaps between current experiences offered by the current P&S’s within a category vs. the ideals expected up those creative high-spend consumers for each EPNS Pool. EPNS pool is the intersection bucket of EP and NS within the 5x5 matrix.

• Context sensitive EG metrics in % at Experience-Pool-Need-State (EPNS) pool level e.g. SURVEYED EXPERIENCE GAPS (SEG %)and DERIVED EXPERIENCE GAPS (DEG%) in the EG areas of – enjoyment, mood-fill, award-status, access, relevance, convenience, personalization, uniqueness, deal, good enough mindset, recreation, nutrition, flavor, texture, energy, trendiness, style etc or some combination of above as outlined in the picture at the top of the page.
• Context sensitive EG relative priority rankings at Experience-Pool-Need-State (EPNS) pool level e.g. SURVEYED EXPERIENCE GAPS (SEG #) and DERIVED EXPERIENCE GAPS (DEG #) of the above EG’s.
• Context sensitive weight factor for each EG metrics (%) and rankings (#) at Experience-Pool-Need-State (EPNS) pool level e.g. SURVEYED EXPERIENCE GAPS (SEG #) and DERIVED EXPERIENCE GAPS (DEG #) of the above EG’s.

4. EPC Gap Analysis – econometric analysis to identify the experience gaps between current experiences offered by the current P&S’s within a category vs. the ideals expected up those creative high-spend consumers for each EPC Pool level. EPC pool is the intersection bucket of EP and Channels within the 5x5 matrix, very similar to the above matrix, with the only difference of need-state being replaced by channels(Groceries, Drugs, Mass, online, mobile etc.)

• Context sensitive EG metrics in % at Experience Pool-Channel (EPC) levels e.g. SURVEYED EXPERIENCE GAPS (SEG %)and DERIVED EXPERIENCE GAPS (DEG%) in the areas of - physical/virtual feeling, ease of experience from home vs. making a trip , on my side, better deals, service on a touch of a dial/screen, same day vs. next day delivery, flavor, texture, energy, trendiness etc.
• Context sensitive EG relative priority rankings at Experience Pool-Channel (EPC) levels e.g. SURVEYED EXPERIENCE GAPS (SEG #) and DERIVED EXPERIENCE GAPS (DEG #) of the above EG’s.
• Context sensitive weight factor for EG metrics(%) and rankings(#) at Experience-Pool Channel (EPC) levels e.g. SURVEYED EXPERIENCE GAPS (SEG #) and DERIVED EXPERIENCE GAPS (DEG #) of the above EG’s.

5. EPNS and EPC pool based new opportunity analysis - mapping the ENS and EPC gap experiences to future P&S’s (in the form of line extensions and/or new product/business model innovations) in few more variations (i.e. permutations and combinations).

• EPNS/EPC with Decision Makers (Moms, Dads, Grand Parents)
• EPNS/EPC with Life stage (Family, Single, Senior Citizen Boomers etc)
• EPNS/EPC with Family Type (Small, Medium, Large)

6. EPNS & EPC pools mapping to tiered brand strategy (dual or triple brand positioning) based on these emerging/emotional gap opportunities.

7. EPNS & EPC pools mapping to tiered pricing strategy/framework based on the gap opportunities.

8. EPNS & EPC pools mapping to differentiation tier strategy based on these emerging/emotional gap opportunities.

9. EPNS and EPC based Profit Pool Analysis - Experience Fulfillment (EF) map wherein ENS and EC pools are mapped to current and gap opportunities in the form of revenue, volume and profits.

10. Final recommendation with an action plan/execution focused roadmap.

As it turns out, solving these macro dilemmas within the larger context of our PTV© view, in our opinion, has definitely paid off, in the form of two synthesis based “doing both” solution frameworks called Experience Pool Portfolio (EPP) and Purpose innovation Portfolio (PIP) – respectively addressing the challenges posed by these macro level dilemmas. At the same, we would like to highlight the fact that, in the real world within large corporations, there exists always a tension between the opposite ends of these dilemmas – and so– as leaders, we have a greater responsibility of resolving these tensions, on a proactive, timely manner using emerging collaboration techniques like Power Through Collaboration (PtC©) framework promoted by experts like Dr. Steve Willis. At the end of the day, executing these collaboration driven strategic actions on a timely manner, much before the competitors, is what going to create the incremental value for shareholders.

In a way, we can also call our PTV© as a Reset Enabling View (REV©) as it revisits/resets some of the foundational assumptions of the other dominant strategic views of recent years (and derives its best features from them as well) and help organizations to go back to their drawing board with a reset/refresh mindset – and so, in our opinion, PTV© is one of the best views to develop both near and longer term reset/refresh strategies (e.g. Annual Plan and 2020 strategic plan), especially for corporations within those industries (Consumer Goods, Consumer Electronics/Media/Telecom and Retail industries to be specific) that are trying to reset their businesses to better align with the challenges and opportunities of the next decade, as identified in one of the recent McKinsey’s surveys.

Purpose Innovation© – An answer for developing the next billion dollar, game changer type opportunities?

Out of the six dilemmas that were identified within our last blog , the one that has caught the attention of most folks was - the dilemma between customer (or user) centric innovation vs. vision centric innovation – and so, we thought of expounding upon that topic little more within today’s blog. While both of these innovations are equally important - the most successful innovative companies in the world today are the ones who have found a way to balance them properly (by assigning the appropriate emphasis to both) depending upon where they are in the life cycle or season of their business. In other words, the intuitive tactics of assigning the right weight factor emphasis to both innovations (in the form of 60:40 or 70:30 or 50:50 split) within the context of their business life cycle is what going to differentiate a company from their competitors. As it turns out, our purpose innovation© concept seem to exactly do the same – as it inherently helps companies to pick and choose the best of both worlds – i.e. choosing the best features of customer and vision centric innovations (with the right split weight factor emphasis) that is further custom- tailored to their business cycle.


The natural follow-on question is - how does Purpose Innovation do that from pragmatic standpoint? Let us take one of the key strategic challenges facing most companies today – creating the next billion dollar game changer opportunity - and see, if our purpose innovation© concept can help solve that puzzle. First things first… With the concept of purpose innovation being already covered in detail in one of our earlier blogs –we are going to just focus on putting purpose innovation© in to practice within today’s blog. We recommend our readers to read the earlier blog to get grounded on purpose innovation© concepts (Purpose Models, Purpose Bundles and Purpose Platforms etc.) - before reading today’s blog.

Now, back to the question of developing the next billion dollar opportunity, as a first step, let us introduce an index called Consumer Experience Threshold (CET) © index. CET index is an index that is designed to quantify the “value of experience” expected by consumers from a P&S category, not only based on the price they are willing to pay (i.e. baseline functional experience expectation), but also, based on what they are dreaming of experiencing (i.e. emotional and emerging experience expectations) from it, on top of its baseline functional experiences. In other words, when a P&S delivers more than the consumer’s baseline experience expectations (or more than its category median break-even CET), it is deemed to be an exceptional P&S - and, in our opinion, those brands that exceed the CET index, on a consistent basis are the ones that qualify to be the next billion dollar brand or opportunity.

• CET = Baseline Experience/Price +the dreaming component of Emotional & Emerging Experiences

Having said that, with all things being equal, it is important to highlight yet another fact that different P&S categories will have different CET indices – and so, it is important that a brand, not only to figures out a way to accurately calculate that CET index for its category, but also, find a way to go above that index consistently, for it to qualify to be the next billion dollar opportunity. As it turns out, there is another challenge here as well- that competition keeps pushing the CET index higher and higher on a daily basis (as consumer's experience expectations keeps going up as well), and so, the need of the hour is a mechanism to group the experiences of various P&S categories in the form of a framework, so that companies can devise ways to exceed their category CET indices on a consistent basis.

With that need in mind, we did a deeper dive analysis on the CET index concept using a CET framework as outlined on the top of the page. With the economy showing signs of improvement- more and more consumers are becoming experience minded when it comes to buying various P&S categories. Our research also suggests that more than 50% of the consumers are looking for better value experience deals when it comes to buying P&S’s - followed by another 30% who are willing to exchange their preferred brands for better experience providing brands. This does not mean that they are trying to buy cheap – rather they want to get the best possible experiences for the price they are willing to pay. Within the context of this insight, we did some more “deeper dive analysis” on the spending patterns of consumers across various P&S experience categories. The insights we garnered was all the more intriguing - that consumers have altered their spending patterns, not only based on the experience their brands provide, but also, based on the way they map their preferred P&S’s to the experience it provides. Based on this renewed insight, we grouped those experiences under five major experience categories and plotted them within the CET framework – with “Dollars Paid” on X axis and “degree of perceived Experience” in Y axis - as outlined below and on top of the page.

• Experience base liners – addressing the basic experiences quadrant -where these P&S’s barely break-even the CET median index and provide just the minimum baseline/functional experiences for a price point below the industry average - leaving an impression of “no gain, no pain” mindset in consumer’s minds.



• Experience Stalers – addressing the basic experiences quadrant -where these P&S’s barely break-even the CET median index and provide just the minimum baseline/functional experiences, but for a price point much above the industry average – and so, leaving an impression of “paid in full, yet no net gain” mindset in consumer’s minds.
  
  
• Experience Stars – addressing the star type experiences quadrant-where these P&S’s exceed the CET median index and provide both emotional and emerging experiences on top of the baseline/functional experiences for a price point above the industry average - leaving an impression of “paid in full, yet got dollar’s worth” mindset in consumer’s minds.



• Experience Super Stars – addressing the super star type experiences quadrant -where these P&S’s score exceed the CET index and provide both emotional and emerging experiences on top of the baseline/functional experiences for a price point below the industry average - leaving an impression of “Got a deal, yet exceeded $’s worth” mindset in consumer’s minds.



• Experience balancers – addressing the “optimum experience” quadrant – where a P&S or a bundle of P&S’s together provide both emotional and emerging experiences on top of the baseline/functional experiences for a price point, just around the the industry average - leaving an impression of “Got a deal, and got $’s worth” mindset in consumer’s minds.

Interestingly enough, four of these experience categories fell perfectly in to the four quadrants of the framework with an exception of one category called experience balancers– which got placed in the centre of the framework covering all the four quadrants. What does this tell us? There is a new need of “purpose experience based composite brand equation” evolving when it comes to consumer’s experience expectations. This new need - is indeed an emerging insight – and so, it is time to accept this new composite brand experience based purpose bundle (i.e. bundling products and services in the form of purpose bundles) and devise an appropriate purpose innovation strategy to answer these emerging experience patterns of 21st century consumers.

Granted, the CET indices vary from category to category and industry to industry – and so, those brands that exceed their category CET median index consistently are the ones that qualify to be the next billion dollar brand. This is where our purpose innovation concept looks very promising as it helps companies to create the next billion dollar composite opportunity using the same rationale used by the alchemy equation (1+1=3 ) that is commonly used to justify the synergistic M&A business cases. In other words, by combining various "multiple experience providing" P&S’s from both related and unrelated industry verticals with various degrees of CET indexes in the form of purpose bundles would definitely help participant companies to exceed composite CET median indexes on a consistent basis. In other words, the next billion dollar opportunity may not necessarily come from a single category brand – rather it could be a composite brand in the form a purpose bundle covering multiple P&S categories across multiple related and unrelated industry verticals.

For example, a Health and Wellness/Green minded consumer (who is also a passive participant of the Purpose innovation platform), will get a better experience deal when they purchase a dynamic purpose bundle of “health insurance along with a variety of H&W based durables and non durable P&S and GYM workout services” in a price that is in proportion to their purpose scores. The causal chain relationship rationale here is that- those consumers, who eat healthy organic food, apply natural beauty treatments to their bodies and exercise well will have a healthy life - and hence they deserve a better health insurance premium and so on and so forth. In other words, stronger the power of purpose themes (e.g. H&W, Green, Externality etc.) that binds the purpose bundle components together, the stronger the affinity (or causal chain relationship) within the sub components of the purpose bundles – which will eventually make this composite brand to be viewed as a single category brand in the hearts and minds of consumers .

I am sure someone is asking - how does this Purpose Innovation concept along with purpose bundles, purpose models and composite brands (& the corresponding CET framework) help solve the earlier dilemma between customer centric innovation and vision centric innovations? As it turns out, customer centric innovation, by and large helps companies only to meet just the base line experience expectations (i.e. Experience base liner and Experience staler quadrants) whereas vision centric innovations is the one that help companies to exceed the base line expectations to become Experience Stars and/or Experience Super Stars, as we can clearly see in the CET framework picture on the top of the page. This does not mean that companies need to pick one approach vs. the other; rather they need to do both in the words of Inder Sidhu and Roger Martin – as focusing on vision centric innovation without customer centric mindset, will invariably result in “out of context” super star experiences without the minimum functional/ base line experiences – and vice versa.

At the same time, we should not limit our innovative thinking just to meet the needs and wants of the typical consumers (as 80% of consumers by and large look for solutions to solve only their today’s needs); rather we need to derive our inspirations from the remaining 20% of the creative consumers – as part of the vision centric innovation. In a way one can also call the vision centric innovation as customer centric innovation in steroids (or glorified customer centric innovation) - and this where our purpose innovation concept comes in to the picture as it derives its best features from both customer and vision centric innovation approaches- as outlined in the center of the CEM framework picture.

In the final analysis, it is important to highlight the fact that history is filled with many such examples of billion dollar game changer opportunities – but, if you study them all in detail, there are not many of them in the recent years, with the exception of few within the consumer gadget product categories. Part of the reason is that most consumer’s needs and wants have already been met my multiple products and services within a given category, and in a way, most P&S categories are highly crowded with products of similar functions without much differentiation. Hence, the need of the hour is an alternate, out of the box, differentiated approach called Purpose Innovation© – and, in our opinion, it is one of the compelling ways to create the next billion dollar game changer opportunities for corporations.

Portfolio-Thread View (PTV©) in action within a 2020 strategic planning scenario

As we are well aware, within the last few weeks, we have been pitching a compelling case for our "PtC© collaboration driven PTV© View"– based on the lessons learned from the dominant strategy views (SPV, RBV, SEV, DTV etc.) of recent years- especially from the standpoint of how they have evolved within the last 50+ years. While our compelling pitches have definitely got the attention of few strategy practitioners - one of our fellow strategists encouraged us to expound on PTV© in detail- in terms of how it will actually come to life within a real world engagement with a “day in the life” strategic planning scenario. In other words, we are going to challenge ourselves and put PTV© in Practice using a real world strategic planning case study within today’s blog.

To meet this challenge, we have developed a metaphor driven “mini case study”- leveraging the learning’s from one of our recent strategic planning engagements of our client called CPGR-Co Inc. (our fictitious CPG/Retail Corporation pronounced as ZipGyarCo) - who had asked us to help them formulate their 2020 strategic plan - to unleash their growth and innovation opportunities. As a starting point, using our 10 box model, we framed up their strategic planning problem space with a set of 6W based hypothesis (or questions) to help solve their 2020 challenge. For the purposes of this case study (and to maintain their anonymity), we have provided only the hypothesis part of our case study (& not the final answers) – given the fact, hypothesis formulation (& its sub questions) is the single most important task within any strategic planning engagement/case study – and the subsequent answers are client specific – as it varies from client to client, industry to industry depending upon the internal/external environmental data points. With that said, let us first agree on few foundational definitions (with a help of a metaphor) to get grounded before plunging in to the case study in detail.

So, what is PTV© again?

First things first - under PTV©- strategy is a portfolio of aspiration structures that are knitted together by our 10 box model based strategic threads/themes - producing multiple strategy choices as outlined in one of our earlier blogs. Let us use a card game puzzle metaphor to better understand how PTV© is different from other dominant views. In most strategy views, strategy is viewed as a traditional card game puzzle – wherein each part of the puzzle (i.e. aspiration structure portfolio elements) is viewed as individual pieces of the strategy that are being assembled together to form the final big picture. On the other hand, within PTV©, strategy is viewed as an “Anchor Stone Tangram” puzzle with its 36+ design constructs - when assembled in various combinations producing variety of meaningful big pictures depending upon the sequence in which they are assembled - very much like how our PTV© helps us to develop multiple strategy choices depending upon the way we sequence/knit the aspiration structure portfolio elements and the strategy threads – that are further shaped by the competitive situation scenarios and the vision/ imagination of the strategists.


PT view is all about fishing for the Perfect choice within the set of Permissive choices

To understand this multiple strategic choices development process further – let us use yet another “chute and ladder (CL)” game metaphor, to better grasp its concept. The chutes and ladders within the game board playing area can be visualized as the opportunities and roadblocks respectively within the four walls of a corporation campus - in which one can reach the senior leadership floor- using multiple paths (very much like how one can reach the CL game destination using multiple paths within the CL game). Nevertheless, only one path, in general is the perfect path that is commonly used by the senior leaders except on few situations - where the internal/external conditions (construction work, unfortunate accidents beyond one’s control, bad weather etc) might make the senior leaders to take an alternate path – which might become the perfect path for a period of time and so and so forth.

This is where our PTV© comes in to the picture- as it is designed to help us find that perfect path in those unexpected situations – i.e. finding the perfect strategy choice from the multiple permissive strategy choices depending upon the internal/external competitive scenarios. The question however is - what happens if one chooses to take the permissive path even in normal circumstances? Granted, we will still be able to reach the final destination, but definitely not in an optimal fashion- as there might exist one or more chutes along the way within those permissive paths to slow us down before reaching the final destination - and this is where our PT view again (with its set of dashboard tools, techniques and templates) help us to perform various “what if scenario analysis” on top of its portfolio of aspiration structures to help arrive at the perfect choice (providing the right to win SCA ) out of the various permissive choices. Interestingly enough, we may be able to derive some additional insights from the spiritual concept of finding “GOD’S PERFECT WILL vs. PERMISSIVE WILL” that is commonly taught within the scriptures (of west and east alike) to better understand this PERFECT CHOICE vs. PERMISSIVE CHOICE strategy dilemmas.

The natural follow-on question is how do we choose the perfect choice between these two seemingly opposing permissive choices (i.e. Yin and Yang type scenarios) with conflicting goals? Well, this is where we need to use our intuition/synthesis based converging techniques (as opposed to the analytics based diverging techniques ) to reconcile/agree on the "essential" features from both options, yet compromising on the non-essential features – thus formulating the third option with a best of both worlds. While it might sound like an abstract theory – we can feel rest assured - that it has been used successfully by the philosophers of yester-years to resolve the doctrinal dilemmas for centuries.

Some of the most notable examples being - a) Augustine who had used a similar intuitive synthesis based technique to resolve the doctrinal conflicts between two opposing views in Church history and b) Gaudiya tradition that used a similar intuitive tactics to resolve Shiva-Vishnu conflicts. Augustine would say “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity” – which perfectly aligns with this intuitive synthesis principle of agreeing on the best of both world type essentials - yet compromising on the non essentials. Similarly under the Gaudiya tradition, the Shiva-Vishnu question is nicely dealt with, in terms of reconciling the major Shiva/Vishnu related doctrinal conflicts using intuitive contextual interpretation – in which Shiva/Vishnu are jiva on certain occasions and sometimes not- depending upon the context in which the deity is being interpreted very much like how “God the Father” and “God the Son” are being interpreted in bible. Honestly speaking – I have always been inspired by the deeper insights from the ancient scriptures of both west and the east like – and found them to be very helpful in sharpening the strategic insights. I would love to hear from other readers on their experiences as well.

PT View in Practice

Now that we have understood the perfect choice vs. permissive choice dilemmas within the context of both spiritual and strategy disciplines- the next obvious question is how does PTV© inherently help us to solve these dilemmas efficiently? The answer lies in the way PTV© efficiently knits (or balances) the aspiration structure portfolio elements with a help of our 10 box strategy threads/themes (such as differentiation, cost leadership, focus, globalization etc.) within the context of the four BSC perspectives - as identified by Kaplan/Norton’s BSC framework. In other words, PT view is designed to balance (and answer) the following “6W based cause and effect driven opposing scenario questions” within the context of the four perspectives of Kaplan/Norton’s BSC design - to help arrive at the optimal aspiration structure portfolio mix producing the magical SCA providing the right to win for our client CPG-Co– as part of their 2020 strategic planning engagement.

As we can clearly see that – each of the four perspectives of BSC are often at odds with each other in terms of their goals and requirements resulting in a 6W based seemingly opposing scenarios within these four perspectives- as outlined below and in the picture on the top of the page . For example, the most notable dilemma being the conflict between Financial and Growth/Learning perspectives - resulting in Q-To-Q results vs. long term results dilemma and so on and so forth. Solving these 6W’s efficiently is what sets an organization apart in terms of developing, testing and implementing well differentiated/well guarded strategies that are difficult to be emulated by the competitors.

1. Purpose vs. Profit Scenario (Addressing the WHO do we serve question of adding value to customers vs. shareholders). This hypothesis further drills down in to the customer and shareholder value segmentations at a granular level - to balance the profit and purpose value dilemmas in an effective and efficient manner.
   
   
2. Market Driven vs. Resource Driven Scenario (SPV vs. RBV) – Addressing “WHAT strategy formulation view to use” question by using the best features from Strategic Positioning View vs. Resource Based View. This hypothesis further drills down to choose the perfect choice out of the many permissive choices at a granular level – and to clearly articulate the underpinnings of the portfolio aspiration structure portfolio elements (that maximizes the SCA) with a help of a dashboard driven what-if-analysis scenario design tools, techniques and templates.



3. Operational Excellence vs. Innovation Excellence Scenario (SEV vs. DTV) - Addressing “WHICH strategy management view to use question” by using the best features from Strategic Execution View and Design Thinking View. This hypothesis further drills down to choose the perfect choice out of the many permissive choices at a granular level – and to clearly articulate the underpinnings of the portfolio aspiration structure portfolio elements (that maximizes the SCA) with a help of a dashboard driven what-if-analysis scenario design tools, techniques and templates.



4. Customer centric vs. Vision centric Scenario – Addressing WHY do we exist question – or the reason for being in the business - i.e. meeting the “needs and wants” of customers vs. redefining their” needs and wants” with a vision centric innovation. This hypothesis further drills down to at a granular level - to clearly define the boundaries and source of innovation in terms of whether it is going to be limited within four walls and meets just the current needs and wants of customers vs. going across the related and unrelated industry vertical boundaries in the form of the purpose innovation as we had identified in our earlier blog .



5. Supply/Push driven vs. Demand/Pull Driven Scenario (Inside the Four walls vs. outside the four walls) – Addressing the WHERE to position the value question – to help design an efficient value chain based on the best features from Push and pull value chain designs. This hypothesis further drills down at a granular level - to clearly define how and where the value will be created and consumed in terms of whether it is going to be limited within four walls meeting just the current needs and wants of customers (and the immediate partners/suppliers) vs. going across the related and unrelated industry verticals in the form of the pull value chain based purpose innovation as we had identified in our earlier blog .



6. Q-To-Q results vs. long term results Scenario -Addressing the WHEN to reap the financial value question of focusing on quarter by quarter results vs. 3-5 year results. These hypothesis further drills down in to financial results at a granular level to help focus both on the Q-To-Q results and long term results with a Corporate Performance Management (CPM) System.

Although these 6W’s appear to be resulting in 6 seemingly opposing scenarios on the surface – PTV© inherently helps us to balance (& solve) these 6W’s – with a set of analytics/synthesis based tools, techniques and templates (using an automated what if scenario based dashboard tools) to help answer these 6W’s with clarity, certainty and speed. In other words, PTV© uses a balanced combination of analytics and synthesis driven “doing both” principle driven problem solving techniques, tools and templates - as promoted by Inder Sidhu and Roger Martin. Time permitting- we will cover the details behind these dashboard tools/techniques in a future blog. Coincidentally, couple of our fellow strategist like Mr. Gerald Nanninga (http://planninga-from-nanninga.blogspot.com/search/label/Balanced%20Scorecard) and Mr. Ali Annani have used similar balancing opposites based thinking to show the relationship between blue ocean strategy and team work dimension of BSC framework(http://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/blue-ocean-strategy-balanced-scorecard-strategy-and-team-forming-a-shared-perspective) as well.

Conclusion

This type of PtC© collaboration driven PTV© strategic view – not only helps us to answer these seemingly opposing 6W’s - but also, inherently enables us to take a systemic view in our strategic planning efforts– which further positions us to create boundary less purpose innovation models and bundles as outlined in one of our earlier blogs.In other words, this well orchestrated strategic planning process that is based on the nature’s principle of balancing opposites, reinforcing teamwork and collaboration - is what differentiates PTV© from other dominant strategic views. With that said, let us be rest assured that this PtC© driven PTV© is guaranteed to help unlock the creative innovation potential that is buried deep inside the large organizations like CPGR-Co.