
What's BOLD?	Leadership	Strategy	Planning	Facilitation	Services

What is BOLD Strategy^®?

BOLD Strategy grew out of two, primary, underlying concepts.

The first concept of BOLD has to do with the starting assumptions of the strategy development process itself. In "bad" strategy development, the organization focuses internally to see what else it might be able to do with what it already has. In "best" strategy development, the organization explores the external environment to see what new and different opportunities it can create. In developing BOLD strategy, the organization develops a unique perspective on how the external environment should be fundamentally better, and how the organization will make that perspective a reality. A BOLD Strategy inspires the organization to exert greater influence on the external environment than the external environment exerts on the organization. Another way of saying this is "rule breaking and rule making, instead of rule taking!"

The second concept of BOLD relates to the traditional 2x2 growth strategy matrix (existing and new markets vs. existing and new products and services). The most challenging cell in this growth strategy matrix, sometimes referred to as "White Space", has also been labeled "Bolder" in The Art of Growth. While all three of the other cells have some "existing" market or product and service to leverage, this area of growth strategy involves developing concepts and orchestrating actions that are completely new and different.

Please note: Despite claims to the contrary, being BOLD is NOT about taking unnecessary risks. BOLD Strategy, Inc. does NOT advocate, encourage, or promote engaging in reckless behavior such as jumping out of airplanes, serious mountain climbing without proper gear, trademark abuse, or frivolous legal harassment. If you have come to this website by mistake, hoping to find inspiration to engage in these types of activities, you have come to the wrong place.

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Principles of Effective Strategy and Planning

Strategy and planning are two completely different things.

Strategy and planning represent the highest impact, long-term value-creating processes in any business model. As such, they deserve an extraordinary degree of discipline.

Although strategy has traditionally been viewed as the domain of senior managers, success is greatest when the collective knowledge and imagination of the entire organization can be effectively and creatively engaged in the process.

Strategy is not about anything currently going on within the organization; rather, it is about everything that is going on outside the organization, especially with customers and their customers.

Because the business environment is constantly changing, strategy must be approached as an ongoing, learning process.

The strategy horizon should never be set using some arbitrary time frame; instead discovery, invention and articulation of the eventual, “necessary” future should be the only measure of how far is far enough.

As strategy evolves, communication about the strategy throughout the organization ensures multi-directional dialogue that informs and enhances integration of planning activities.

Effective planning engages people from all areas of the organization and addresses all dimensions of organizational change in an integrated manner.

The planning horizon should extend far enough to encompass the expected time required to develop capabilities needed to create the necessary future and secure the organization’s leadership role.

Because organizations make continuous progress in executing plans to achieve the strategy, planning must also be approached, not as an event, but as an ongoing discipline focused on making the strategy happen.
While many process variations are possible, the specific needs of the organization should drive the specific, unique process design selected. An over-engineered approach will be costly, painful, and frustrating to endure, while an under-developed approach will not deliver the required results.

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The Role of Instigators

The BOLD Strategy framework is designed to inspire people in all types of organizations to achieve and maintain strategic leadership. More specifically, “instigators” cause strategy development and planning activities to occur. They “provoke” the collective organization to develop, articulate and maintain a vision of how the business environment should be different in the future and how the organization will drive the creation of, and secure a leadership role in, that necessary future. They also help to orchestrate the collaborative development of plans to move the organization toward the envisioned role in the necessary future. Finally, they support the organization during the execution of the established plans by helping to focus on and celebrate achievement of progress.

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Technology Enablement

In addition to specific methods and techniques that support the four major processes, the BOLD Strategy framework also specifies a technology-enabled architecture that includes essential productivity and collaboration tools for best-practice information and knowledge management. These include:

collaborative brainstorming, idea organization and prioritization tools and processes to support various creative and analytical activities;
a knowledge-based repository to help manage and integrate the various models and elements developed and used throughout the framework;
a number of visualization tools to facilitate communication of complex ideas; and
various internet-based “deep research” capabilities for finding critical industry, competitor and other stakeholder information.

A word of caution should accompany any suggestion of the last item above. With the explosion of data and information available via the Internet and other “net-centric” environments, contemporary decision makers too often make the mistake of believing that the key to good decision making lies in having more information. They implement huge data warehouses and are surprised when they find themselves overwhelmed by huge amounts of marginally useful, and often conflicting, information. Instead of more information, what they actually need is the right, relevant information, and only so much of it. In order to achieve levels of performance required by “contemporary situations” these critical decision makers need more powerful tools for targeting, acquiring, filtering, organizing and integrating relevant information from diverse sources to improve the speed and quality of their decisions and subsequent actions.

An advanced “Domain Expert System” is currently under development to address this very need. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina clearly demonstrated the urgency of enabling ad-hoc groups of decision-makers, experts and capable resources to quickly assemble, share, organize and interpret critical information and make complex decisions in real time. When people in these types of situations are geographically dispersed, net-centric solutions can facilitate their coming together virtually to develop the necessary strategy (sets of decisions) and actions required to meet the challenges of the unique situation. Further, by gaining an in-depth understanding of which decisions and uncertainties really matter, and which don’t, and when, helps them to know what specific, relevant information to monitor to ensure that the strategy remains optimal by adapting as conditions change. The Domain Expert System will support collaborative, adaptive decision-making and action-taking by providing a 21st Century net-centric knowledge management and decision support environment, equipped with the capability to launch “intelligent agents” for critical information monitoring, acquisition and integration required to achieve "situational awareness". Further, by tightly coupling the management of decision-making and action-taking information, the Domain Expert System will enable closed loop learning capabilities that will drive continuous improvement and knowledge maturity over time.

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Collaborative Innovation Center (CIC)

In Future Shock (1970) Alvin Toffler asserted that bureaucracies of the 20th century would be challenged and destroyed by adhocracies in the 21st century. In The Structuring of Organizations Henry Mintzberg suggested a more complementary relationship. Adhocracies could emerge out of bureaucratic structures to accomplish tasks more collaboratively than the bureaucracy would otherwise allow. After completing their task, the collaborators would return to their respective responsibilities in the larger organization.

Vision

In the face of contemporary situations and asymmetrical threats, take one or more bureaucracies (which would otherwise be unresponsive), identify the key decision makers, establish a collaborative environment, move them there, connect them back to their respective constituencies, deploy the optimal, joint interorganizational resources, establish empowering guidance, and connect with other relevant collaborative teams.

Design Objectives

Support teams of up to 12 people (“adhocracies”)
Create a “high visualization”, collaborative decision making environment
Provide supporting methods, tools and services
Optimize synchronous local collaborative work and subsequent remote or asynchronous follow-up activities
Operate seamlessly as a node in a network of like facilities

Applications/Uses

Executive strategy development
Collaborative software development and deployment
Collaborative authoring (screenplays, etc.)
Collaborative concept development
Emergency/situation response
Other “Adhocracy” enablement

Features

The CIC will be a full-service facility to support strategic collaborative activities.

The facility will include:

a reception area, staffed with a receptionist/consierge, who buffers incoming messages and other potential interruptions and manages all travel, recreation reservations, arrangements, and logistics;
the collaborative innovation lab, staffed with team of two facilitators/technographers, and equipped with twelve Networked Stations with software tools to support a full range of collabroative activities, six large, rear-screen projection screens and other key information input and output devices;
a lounge for decompression with full service refreshments and snacks;
a dining room;
a kitchen;
an office, staffed by facilitators/technographers, with adjacent computer and storage rooms; and
five breakout rooms that provide private workspace for one or two people per room.