What is strategy?

The best definition on the planet is the one offered by Roger Martin: “Strategy is an integrated cascade of choices that uniquely positions a player in its space to create sustainable advantage.”

That cascade consists of five key questions:

What is our winning aspiration?

Where will we play?

How will we win?

What capabilities do we need?

What management systems are required?

After coming up to speed quickly, participants in the Playing To Win master class learn not only how to integrate answers to these deceptively simple questions in an innovative way, but also how to reverse engineer the logic with strategy’s “magic” question—what must be true?—the answers to which identify critical assumptions. They learn how to construct strategic tests. They will also gain facility with the Playing-to-Win Canvas, a visual tool developed in collaboration with (and approved by) Roger Martin that helps participants grasp the framework in a visual and tactile way.

Class Format: 1/2-day or 1-day

Empathy First

Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that allows non-designers to use the designer’s creative tools and methods to match human needs with what is conceptually feasible and what a sound strategy can convert into true value.

The ultimate goal of Design Thinking is to embed a simple and sustainable innovation method across the entire organization, enabling a companywide culture of constant creativity and collaboration.

Similar to the way I learned it at Stanford’s d school, my Design Thinking training course is an experiential immersion in which participants focus on solving a real-world problem, enabling them to experience the entire design thinking process:

Humanizing — gaining empathy for users

Conceptualizing — meeting user needs creatively

Prototyping — building low resolution mockups

Testing — iterative experimenting with prototypes

Course formats can be tailored, and range from a 90-minute “crash course” to a multi-day bootcamp delivering a deep dive into design thinking techniques.

Wasteless Continuous Improvement

Whether it’s lean manufacturing or lean startup, the word lean in a business context has a simple definition: the absence of excessive complexity.

Lean has a single goal: make more room for what truly matters by eliminating what doesn’t. It’s a different, subtractive way of thinking. That’s why so many companies can’t get lean, no matter what they do.

Nearly a decade of working closely with Toyota—the birthplace of lean—taught me the right way. And it’s what makes my Lean Thinking unique: it’s authentic.

Lean Thinking is applicable to everything from internal process redesign to new product development and entrepreneurial startup.

Participants in my Lean Thinking course experience lean  principles in action through the official Toyota Production System (TPS) simulation. They then engage in an exercise designed to identify real-world issues that represent opportunities to employ Lean Thinking.

Participants in multi-day Lean Thinking courses will learn continuous process improvement via the kaizen methodology, and gain facility with my Kaizen Canvas, a proprietary tool adapted from the Toyota A3 problem-solving process.

Course formats can be tailored, and range from a 3-hour “crash course” to a 2-day immersive bootcamp.

FIXING THE FATAL THINKING FLAWS

Based on my 2016 book Winning the Brain Game, this is a high-energy, highly interactive training program in which participants tackle several thought challenges in order to experience the very same “7 fatal flaws” of thinking as those I catalogued over the course of ten years through hundreds of creative sessions:

Leaping

Fixation

Overthinking

Satisficing

Downgrading

Not Invented Here

Self-Censoring

Each of the seven fatal flaws is explained, then followed by practice with a super-curated, field-tested set of “fixes.” Participants leave with a mental toolkit enabling them to realize higher levels of creative problem-solving capability.

Course format: 1/2-day or 1-day