“AHUM guide to the unknown”

Margaret is a senior investment banker, at her early 50s. After a very successful career in global investment banks she decides to explore possibilities to create her own business in the industry.

  She has an impressive track record of implementing successfully complex M&A deals of financial institutions internationally. She is very passionate about her job but after many years of exhausting traveling and immense work load she also prefers to have the flexibility to spend more time at a beach house she bought recently in a remote island. The last few years she has reconstructed herself changing her relationship with money and status, spending more time with her family and friends and enjoying her hobbies. She is working more with people she likes in interesting projects, focused in geographies where her work has more impact and meaning to her.

 She is willing to examine the possibility to start her new venture but she is not sure what exactly is her niche, what her offer should look like and how she can overcome barriers of brand credibility that a small company would lack in a very competitive environment dominated by the big global firms of the industry.

 We have been working with Margaret for the last four years supporting her through her transition from her long career in the big corporates to a smaller boutique company of the industry. During that period, we had developed a strong professional relationship based on mutual trust and respect and our sessions were always fruitful and joyful even during stressful and frustrating periods for her. When she told me that she is considering to start her own business and she would like me to support her develop a plan to kick it off, I was more than happy to do it. I was confident that if we could find enough time to dedicate to a creative process we would be able to reach a very rewarding outcome.

 Knowing that her life style had changed significantly the last few years and that spending time in her beach house was an essential part of her new self, I proposed to travel there and spend two days together to explore her ideas and develop a plan. I thought that her beautiful house where she was feeling happy and relaxed would be the best place to create the conditions for creative thinking. We would also be able to hang out together and fill the extra hours between working sessions with constructive and inspiring conversations that would enrich our whole project. She was very excited and thankful that I would travel there to work together and she immediately accepted my offer.

 I had prepared an initial structure for our work to make sure that we will explore all relevant and important areas to develop a strategy. The important aspect of our approach in AHUM is that we design a process, a path of sequence of states we will go through with the people we work with to achieve our goals for the project. However, at the beginning of the process, we don’t know what the final outcome will look like. On my long trip to Margaret’s island, I was thinking: “it takes a lot of guts to trust someone to guide you to the unknown”.

When I arrived, I realized why Margaret was so attached to this wonderful island and I was glad I had made the long trip to get there. Her husband, a charming individual and luckily a great cook, would do everything to make us feel comfortable and remain focused on our work without unnecessary distractions. He had prepared a light lunch for us and within an hour, we had already started working.

From our previous work with Margaret we had enough material related to her core strengths, an important ingredient of her new business venture which I was planning to integrate into our work. However, there was a significant part missing; her dreams for the business; what she aspires to become, create and achieve in the future. This was an essential piece of the puzzle that we had to discover first, as it would guide both our work at this stage and the new business in general. Our first conversation was dedicated to explore her vision from which we managed to identify an ideal position for her business in the future coupled with initial information regarding achievements, preferred clients, package of services, organization and talents, estimated revenues, partnerships and alliances. The first session which lasted four hours, generated a very resourceful outcome to build on the next day.

 It was already the end of the first day and we had a wonderful conversation over dinner before we call it a day. Both Margaret and me, were stimulated by the produce of our first hours of work and were looking forward to resuming the following day.

 The next morning Margaret was very eager to see what comes next and we started working very early. According to my initial structure of the process, as a next step, we had to explore the core occupation of the business. The objective was to connect what Margaret really does with how exactly she names it in a simple, clear and well understood way in the market so as to avoid overlapping with similar services. In my experience, creating clarity around what a business really does, what specific craft it practices and where it stands into the broader ecosystem of relevant occupations in an industry is not always clear. I remember spending many hours with a client exploring the generic terms of architecture and design, to conclude that the client’s core occupation was exclusive design of lighting, furniture and objects. We had to draw a map of all other occupations in the area of architecture and design in order to be able to spot the area where our client was really operating. Luckily, Margaret’s occupation was quite straight forward and easy to clarify. This is the piece of information we need to determine the exact segment we will focus on during our work and potential opportunities in the surrounding segments.

The next step to complete what we call a company’s core theme, the endoscopic part of a strategy, was to identify the primary clients. The people that the business exists for. A profile of a preferred client who mirrors the company’s purpose and values, around which the company can standardize its services, get organized, develop its competences and attune its communication. An important part of the strategy development process that maximizes consistency and focus. We managed to identify the preferred client and outline a quite detailed profile.

 At this point we had completed the endoscopic phase and we were ready to start exploring the market and the competition before Margaret had to make some critical choices.

 We went through the trends of the market and the opportunities and threats they generate ahead, given that the geography of focus was predetermined by Margaret. We didn’t have many data to inform further our process (information in such situations is never enough) but Margaret has such a thorough knowledge and understanding of the industry making it difficult to challenge her assumptions and reasoning regarding the industry’s specifics in the geography.

 We also identified the strengths and weaknesses of the new company informed by the previous stages and we categorized the existing competition where Margaret demonstrated again a very clear view and knowledge. We also explored ways to overcome threats and obstacles, revealing options of strategic partnerships and alliances.

 We had gone through the main areas of exploration and Margaret was happy with the logic, the structure and the findings that gradually started to add up and make more sense regarding certain options ahead. It was the right time to start narrowing down the material so as Margaret could make some critical choices. She decided about the focus on market category and segment, the portfolio of services to be offered, the targeted clients, the kind and size of projects to pursuit and the commercial approach.

 We had to take a break after 5 hours of intense work for lunch and a walk to the beach to reenergize before getting into the most creative part of our process which was to synthesize our work and articulate a UVP (unique value proposition). On our way back from the beach, Margaret asked me whether we would be able to come up with the UVP in the evening, as I had to leave the next day before lunch. I explained that I didn’t have control on the outcome and I couldn’t be sure when exactly we will be able to reach it. However, I was very confident that the process was moving to the right direction, we had all the elements to shape it and that if we could manage to remain focused and not skip steps, the outcome would emerge soon.

 Developing the UVP was easier than expected. The thorough exploration of the last two days had revealed all the differentiating elements of what Margaret’s business would bring to the party and we just had to put them together in a truthful and appealing way. We highlighted and summed up the key findings of each part of our exploration and we started articulating in one sentence the company’s offer, making sure that it meets clients’ needs in a way that nobody else in the competition does in this particular geography. All of a sudden, the UVP started taking shape before our eyes, and we went on reading it and reframing it for a while to make it even more specific and crisp until Margaret decided that it was fit for purpose.

 She looked amazed and very excited. This is exactly what she was planning to offer, this is the precise way to describe it. What makes it so special is its honesty and authenticity, stemming from her track record and the unique set of strengths we had managed to reveal from it during the whole process. Margaret was so excited that she couldn’t wait to plan the next steps, setting actions and deadlines to start realizing her dream.

 We spend some time to reflect and exchange feedback regarding the process, the outcome and the next steps. I wanted to confirm that I had managed Margaret’s expectations well and that we had achieved the objectives we had set at the beginning. Margaret was also very happy that during our two-day journey, we had managed to reveal unimagined possibilities to overcome barriers and obstacles. Now that the business had a shape it was easier to find ways to bring it to the market and build bridges with potential partners, alliances and of course clients. Margaret couldn’t wait to share the outcome with her husband who was surprised by the quality and depth of our work. It was time to celebrate the result…

 The next morning, having distanced ourselves from the process of the previous two days, which sometimes can become overwhelming due to its intensity and fruitfulness, we spent another hour reflecting and discussing around our work and the support I could provide in the next steps. Margaret was very optimistic and determined to take the first actions we had designed together as soon as possible.

 This whole process lasted twelve hours of intense and focused dialogue in a pleasant and relaxing environment, between two people who trust and respect each other’s expertise and competences. My job was to come with a minimum structure, a template, covering all the important parts of a strategy development process, leaving enough space for improvisation and inventive thinking. What we do differently from other practitioners in similar situations, is that we emphasize at the beginning to an endoscopic exploration. Many companies approach strategy as an outer directed exercise that has to explore mainly clients, product or services, market and competition trends and possibilities and identify company’s weaknesses and strengths accordingly. We started our journey from within. We turned the light to the core of the company to reveal its uniqueness, focusing on the best practices of its people (Margaret’s in this case but the same applies when we work with teams and organizations). When you know who you are, why you exist and what you aspire to create, you are able to explore market, products and competition in an inner-directed way which produces a more authentic outcome.