Strategic Storyboarding

5 Steps To Win Biggest Profits

The world is complex enough. You don't need a super complex system for building strategic results--and winning big profits. Use this 5-step plan to build your interactive War Room or Command Center. This is your strategic home-zone for innovating, planning, problem solving and staying on course. The 5 Natural Phases of Command Center The five natural phases are: Collaboration Builds Trust Nobody understands your business and strategic opportunity better than you and your team. However, the strongest approach to building trust and shared strategic vision is to involve a wide, diverse group of contributors to collaborate in the Command Center. Involve people in strategic planning and problem solving and they will own the solution. Get a planning team together who will be hosts for the center. Consider expanding who you involve into the Command Center. And then, expand collaborative input from beyond the team to include customers, subject matter experts, directors and super-users to get a wide range of input. Your collaborative effort builds partners from start to finish. Your partners will not only embrace the problem — they will build the solution. And they will eventually be spokespeople, spreading the word and sharing the message, so that the strategic solution yields remarkable results. Process Drives Design Storyboard templates guide your team through the repeatable and essential process exposing the critical elements of strategy. Nothing is extra. No random fluff. This specific design sequence guarantees high quality output. In the process teams address critical questions, use in depth-research, plan for engagement and organize from the beginning for easy, memorable story telling. No matter whether you are creating a global branding strategy or an effective business expansion on a shoestring, follow the blueprints and get a rock-solid design. Communication design principles and information architecture is hard-wired into each storyboard strategy. Without any additional effort, use the Strategic Storyboards to build meaningful messages that engage people. With a focused, proven strategy and creativity, your Command Center Team will create stories that stand out, stick in peoples’ minds and get people talking. Focus on Results Without results…why bother? The entire Command Center process is results driven. At different stages, there are different results to track, measure and achieve. Measurement is an essential ingredient of a successful Command Center from start to finish. Maximize Collective Expertise By combining wide input and collaboration, the strategy is stronger. Each contributor brings different skills, diverse business experience and distinct expertise. Contributions to the Command Center weave a unique blend of perspectives resulting in an elegant and effective strategy. This is a strategy everyone can speak about. At the same time people advise and contribute they also are learning about the strategy. And they become active messengers talking about the story. This translates into organic growth. It’s easier, faster and more natural to spread a good idea. Shared understanding and alignment is not an after-thought training program. Instead, it's a seed that spreads like wild fire. Now, that’s a smart solution to tapping into the expertise to shape your unique business strategy! In addition to the specific problem solving and immediate impact of strategy, the entire organization grows a new expertise in contextual thinking. This is organizational best-practice building in communication skills. It shows in quality facilitation, innovation, displayed thinking and collaborative problem solving.   Anticipate for High Impact Anticipate the needs of the people who will ultimately have to put the solutions and strategies into action. Build in flexibility and ease of use into the output. This orientation to anticipation is really all about how to win attention, create engagement and set the stage for powerful results. Organize from the beginning to make the message simple, memorable and easy to use. Simplify the words and images used in crafting the final strategic message. This anticipation is truly “starting with the end in mind.” Anticipate how people in the field will interpret messages from corporate headquarters. Prepare in advance for any potential pitfalls in messaging so that every Command Center team member and every expert advisor becomes a messenger for the strategy. Make it easy for people to remember and share the story and the good news. This includes preparing for adaptation and flexibility in all respects. Creatively anticipate how to communicate in different media from print to web to face-to-face meetings; how to adjust the message to match specific audiences and how to maintain and sustain quality and focus and the message goes out. All the advance planning in anticipation will pay off as the message goes out and people can quickly adapt, use and understand what’s in it for them. Collaborate. Process. Results. Expertise. Anticipate. Developing a great strategy is only half the work. Winning your audience attention and planning for engagement — with your customers, with your team and organization — is where the real wins start. This approach to effective strategy building with a Command Center is creative, strategic and results-focused. And by now I'm wondering what you're doing sitting and reading. Isn't it time to get into action? For that, I'd suggest the familiar refrain: Ready…Set…Go!