Approaching Brand Performance
From GPWiki
Friday 10 of September, 2010
“What type of work would Group Partners be able to do for a Brand Director in a global consumer brand?”
Let’s begin with an often debated axiom. “Brand is everything your business does.” If that is true, and it is worthy of deeper debate, then ‘Brand’ needs to be fully understood by everyone, needs to be delivered by everyone, is about every aspect of the system, process and behavior of everyone.
 
Articles written around the Critical Context we find ourselves in in the 21st Century. New thinking about how to create sustainable changeA series of short articles that describe the context within which we need to work if we are to make a difference to the way we operate and survive in the 21st Century - 
Articles On 21st Century ToolsThe 21st Century demands different thinking and ideas to cope with the complex context we have now created. These short articles begin to describe how we are thinking about these areas and starting the debate about what we might do to resolve them.
Articles On ThinkingOne of the main agenda items for success and survival in the 21st Century. These articles explain a lot of the technical and strategic ideas that inform our work - 
Articles On MeaningAt the heart of the inertia we observe in transformation and change is the way in which humans attach words and stories to their experiences while this is a natural human condition it needs to be understood if we are to create the tools that overcome conflict and lack of improvement in complex systems.  Articles About EthicsIncreasingly organizations are determined to really make a difference and not just debate how and what. These articles debate the importance or really getting to grips with the issues that are affecting the entire planet. Articles About Being On The RoadIt's a great privilege working and being able to travel. Ever so slightly tongue in cheek and yet ever so slightly true. The following are notes made to humor myself. Observations that inspire or annoy.
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Look at BMW’s current campaign strap-line "What you make people feel is just as important as what you make" - A true ‘Brand’ company is recognizable by the way it feels and ‘shows up’ to its customers. The biggest problem with this is well documented. Put simply - the success of the ‘brand’ at the coalface is in direct proportion to the ability of the enterprise to wire itself up (be integrated) at each and every interface. Most businesses are at major risk and waste millions on expensive campaigns and activity that merely sell the competitors products by not seamlessly aligning the back office with the front.
Add to this the blindingly obvious fact that in the 21st Century the market and the competitive landscape has changed in so many ways. Clients are now being dragged kicking and screaming by the dynamic forces of ever more complex marketplaces. Clients now need innovation, enlightened mentoring, true creativity and rethinking in the way that they operate. This takes massive endeavor. It is no longer good enough for the marketing department to act as a department.
The business truly needs to act as one. All previous bets are now off. The enterprise needs dramatic change in order to achieve a ‘brand led’ position. This requires real leadership. True ‘thought’ leadership and relentless intention. It needs real and persistent determination. This means that we need to inject transformative thinking and different approaches. This is going to feel like invasive surgery. Real intervention. As one Mr. Einstein suggested - “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
In practical terms our approach directly enables the following:
- Aligning the Brand - Understanding of the brand’s responsibility in delivering the vision – communication, relationship and engagement. In the absence of a distinct vision we will develop one. Internally and Externally.
- Implementing the Brand - Refining the actions, plans and initiatives with the team and by the team who are accountable. Improvement of performance in planning and strategy. Decision Quality is required in any successful planning or where it exists we would focus on realignment. Stakeholder appreciation and alignment. External stakeholders, supply chains.
- Creating the Brand - Where the brand needs a total overhaul or creation the the the entire suite of tools will develop the framework, the vision, the practical materials required and the strategy, action plan and measures and metrics. Everything that is required to build the brand.
- Refining the Brand - Increasing the performance of the brand in every way. In creasing effectiveness against its target markets, segments, routes to market. Competitive scenario planning and positioning. Differentiation. Value proposition and storyboard development.
- Improving the Brand - Developing Excellence in the experience of the brand through multiple touch points. Creating customer strategies for Acquisition, Penetration and Retention.
- Innovating the Brand - Developing new scenarios, experiences in line with precise product and service development. Innovation in radical business models, financial arguments, partner strategies, alternative go to market strategies, media strategies, value networks, social media, Web 2.0 and alternative idea generation for new futures.
- Sustaining the Brand – Creating deeper and richer value within the entire value systems. Working to create the appreciation of the values and characteristics in existing and new markets. Ethical, diversity and sustainable strategic thinking.
There is more -
Group Partners brings a complete ‘solution’, now proven in well over 2000 cases, to resolving the important business and organizational issues. Organizations need clear and unique vision. In order to achieve this they need shared strategies, optimal operational models, clear objectives, outcomes and metrics within a meaningful roadmap of action. We describe this as enabling the 21st Century Organization.
Discovering what we could do enabling the business to know what it knows, what it doesn't know and what it needs to know. 4D™ 
Developing what we should do enabling the business to design alternative strategies that will achieve agreed outcomes.
Deciding what we will do ensuring the business then makes the right choices based on thorough and precise thinking. 
Deploying what we agreed we would do makes sure the entire enterprise stays on track and sustains the effect long into the futureGo to: 4D™, Structured Visual Thinking, The Mission
Our approach to delivering this is Structured Visual Thinking™. It has an application called 4D™ and it results in ‘Decision Quality’. This approach is designed to help organizations rethink the way they work. The approach is based on important conversations within logical models and visual frameworks. Frameworks built this way force creativity and innovation in the way the teams think. This is proven in real application in every market sector and all over the world. It is an approach which is entirely geared to answering the critical questions of today’s businesses.
We believe our clients deserve to understand for themselves what are the real opportunities and in the process avoid solving the wrong problems really well. Organizations need better thinking. This is about collaborative working, co-creativity and logical reasoning - solving what are often wicked or highly complex problems. We apply these ‘tools’ to help enable organizations to become ‘21st Century’ in their ability and fitness to survive.
We work like this because we need to think differently about the systems we live within. Complex living and natural systems. We have to stop thinking in the old way.
How it works
We start by agreeing an exam question. What really is the problem we are trying to solve?
4D™ means Discovering what we ‘could’ do, Developing what we ‘should’ do and then Deciding and Deploying what we ‘will’ do. It changes the way the business needs to think. It is rapid and high energy, co-creative and inclusive. It brings entirely new ideas and approaches to thinking based on the proven ideas of systems, design and integrative thinking. Over the course of the entire approach there is analysis, synthesis and constant documentation in whatever is agreed to be the most valuable form.
The four ‘phases’ to the 4D™ approach. Discovering, Developing, Deciding and Deploying.
1. Discovering - This is the first phase of work to identify what ‘could’ be done to answer the exam question. It uses the Discovery Framework as the tool for conversation and reasoning. We work the leadership team through 11 critical conversations. We may develop further stimulus ahead of this and bring this to bear to aid thinking. The key objective of this phase will be to create alignment and shared definitions of all possibilities and to identify valid options for the future.
2. Developing - In this phase we are starting to work up the options that we identified in the first phase and determining what we ‘should’ do. The Development Framework will govern these discussions. The outcome of this phase is to create a shared and meaningful strategic framework that describes the opportunities and the solutions.
3. Deciding - This phase works through the options in a rigorous decision making process to decide what we ‘will’ do. The Decision Framework is made up of the following tools that frame and qualify the choices. In particular Decision Playbooks for defining the choices, values and trade offs that we started to define in the Development framework - Decision Hierarchies for managing trade offs and Decision Tables for evaluating the options. At this stage we may well establish related Best Practice Architectures that will have been emerging through the previous phases.
4. Deploying - By this phase we are actively preparing the resources to implement. From a Group Partners perspective this largely involves the establishment of an Operational Framework that contains the guiding principles, operational visions and models that will govern implementation. This will be supported by a highly visual and practical roadmap of actions and milestones that cover the new activities that are needed (Start), - identify the activities that must continue (Stay) - and those that must be discontinued (Stop).
