Strategy Distinctiveness Workshop

Having a distinctive strategy can set you apart from your competitors and unite everyone in the organisation behind a common sense of purpose.  Finding that distinctiveness, however, is hard. Finding distinctiveness that matters and is achievable is even harder still.

Goal Atlas are strategy experts.  In particular, we are strategy-process experts and we have a suite of tools and processes for exploring strategic distinctiveness. We facilitate systematic, evidence-based and thorough strategy management by your leaders and teams. We are also independent and hence can add innovation and agility to existing ways of working.

What is it?

Goal Atlas’s unique Strategy Distinctiveness Workshop provides an opportunity for senior leadership to think deeply about the distinctiveness of their strategy and make decisions about how to maintain distinctiveness for the future.

How does it work?

A stimulating, challenging and constructive process, run by experienced facilitators, this workshop typically progresses through three stages (adapted to suit your particular needs and circumstances).

1. Best-practice thinking on distinctiveness: What is best-practice thinking about ‘strategic distinctiveness’? Why is distinctiveness important in strategy?  This will summarise the thinking of some of the world’s greatest strategists such as Porter, Rumelt, Martin, Sull, and McGrath.  This will be followed by facilitated group work: Why is distinctiveness important to us as an organisation?  What benefits could come from being distinctive and what challenges could we face if we lack distinctiveness?  What are our success criteria?  How distinctive is distinctive enough?
2. Strategic distinctiveness in the real world: examples and insights. Followed by facilitated group-work brainstorming the possibilities on distinctiveness and then clustering, categorising and prioritising these possibilities. If needed, Goal Atlas has a variety of tools for benchmarking the current distinctiveness of organisations against their key competitors, which can be a useful way to inform this stage of the workshop.
3. Commitment to action: Having explored best practice and the real-world possibilities for strategic distinctiveness, we now need to decide “So what?”  Do we feel it is essential / desirable / unimportant for us to identify strategic distinctiveness for our organisation?  If so, what needs to be done to define that distinctiveness? And once defined, how will we know our distinctiveness is sufficiently differentiating and purposeful?

This workshop can be delivered in a single full-day session or split into 3 x 2.5 hours sessions over several weeks, giving time for research or consultation into distinctiveness between the sessions.

Who should participate?

This workshop works best with a group of 4 to 6 participants. It is typically run for senior leadership or a mix of the Executive Team and Board members.