Unlocking Success through Action: The 'Muck About' Mantra.
The British idiom, 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating,' perfectly captures our methodology, emphasising 'doing' as the key to success. This approach resonates with various business case studies and experiments that highlight the importance of action, adaptability, and culture in a commercial setting. One influential idea in this realm is Peter Drucker’s statement, "culture eats strategy for breakfast," popularised by Mark Fields, former President of Ford.
Image: Jonny Gios
Drucker and Fields’ sentiment underscores the critical role of corporate culture in strategy execution. An organisation's culture—its values, norms, and behaviours—can significantly impact the success of its strategic initiatives. Even the best-laid plans can falter in a toxic culture, while a strong, positive culture can drive success even when strategic plans are imperfect. A prime example is Pals Sudden Service, a fast-food chain in the US that demonstrates this principle effectively.
Pals Sudden Service, despite its straightforward business strategy, has achieved remarkable success by prioritising culture. Their organisational culture emphasises continuous training, feedback, and improvement, leading to high employee morale. Instead of getting bogged down in extensive strategic planning, they focus on executing their simple plan flawlessly, resulting in an industry-low error rate and a staff turnover rate significantly below the industry average. This example illustrates that excellence in service comes not just from having a strategy, but from consistently executing it.
Another powerful demonstration of the value of 'doing' is the 'moonwalking bear' experiment, formally known as The Invisible Gorilla Experiment by psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. This experiment highlights 'inattentional blindness,' showing how individuals can overlook significant details when they are too focused on a particular task.
In the business world, companies that overly concentrate on strategic planning can become 'blind' to emerging opportunities, technological advances, or market shifts that could be capitalised on with a more action-oriented approach. Examples like Blockbuster, Nokia, and HMV serve as cautionary tales, illustrating the importance of fostering a culture of action and learning over rigid, excessive strategic planning. These cases demonstrate that while strategy is valuable, it cannot replace the need for action and a positive culture.
Our Approach
Our FIT Blueprint© is a 7 to 10 week sprint designed to provide businesses with a roadmap for future growth.
Week 1-2 - Discovery & opportunity definition & research
Project Kick-off
Create a kick-off plan; set up meetings & comms; recruit research participants & prepare.
Kick-off workshop & project charter
A strategic level-setting & discovery workshop to align stakeholders, define success & set clear project goals.
Business baseline
Stakeholder interviews to understand business, market dynamics; review work to date & existing research.
Primary user research
In-depth interviews with users (customers, the team, lapsed and potential users) to understand pain-points, desires, contexts to drive ideation & concept development.
Week 3-6 - Solution exploration & concepts
Synthesising key insights
Refine research into actionable insights to drive thinking & focus on customer needs.
Ideation & concepting
Generate high volume of low-fidelity visual solution concepts to take forward into testing & co-design.
Technology assessment
Work with your tech team to understand technology strategy, stack, constraints, integration points & capabilities.
Validating market-fit
Testing concepts with customers to identify & validate key opportunity areas & early-stage ideas.
Week 7-10 - FIT Functional Value Key
Refinement
Create high-fidelity design concepts to take forward as prototypes, user journeys & service diagrams.
Vision & FIT BluePrint©
A high-level vision that brings the proposition to life, defines how you get there, & where you can go next.
Execution plan & playback deck
Actionable recommendations, target metrics, technology & execution plan broken down into phases, deliverables & outcomes.
LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP)
By incorporating LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP) into our approach, we add a further innovative and unique dimension to collaboration. This hands-on, minds-on methodology helps teams and organisations solve problems and innovate more effectively. Using specially selected LEGO® bricks, team members build metaphorical models of their ideas and challenges. This process unlocks new perspectives and approaches that might otherwise be overlooked in traditional brainstorming or strategic planning sessions. The power of LSP lies in its ability to use 'doing' to spark creativity and foster innovative thinking. The outcome is a more engaged, productive team ready to tackle their business challenges.
Finally, we help organisations shift their culture to embrace digital thinking, fostering innovation, agility, and continuous learning. In an era of relentless digital change, an organisation’s ability to adapt quickly and effectively can be the difference between surviving and thriving.
What Culture Do You Need?
The core strength of our philosophy lies in its emphasis on 'doing' as a primary driver. This approach is exemplified by a simple yet profound experiment involving kindergarteners, CEOs, lawyers, and MBA students. Participants were given 20 pieces of spaghetti, a yard of string, a yard of tape, and a marshmallow, and tasked with building the tallest tower. Interestingly, the kindergarteners consistently built the tallest towers. While the older, 'wiser' participants engaged in strategic discussions, the kindergarteners jumped right into the task, experimenting and iterating rapidly. This experiment highlights a fundamental truth— the more you do, the more you learn.
By encouraging organisations to take action, experiment, iterate, and learn, they can enable faster, and identify more effective opportunities. As Professor Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School notes, "In the face of uncertainty, the quality of decision-making matters less than the speed of iteration." This insight reinforces our 'doing' philosophy and culture.
We embody a unique blend of doing and knowing in our approach. This combination is a cornerstone of our strategy, forming an indispensable tool in any business's arsenal. The 'doing' element encourages organisations to explore, experiment, and discover, while the 'knowing' part leverages the power of experience to drive strategic plans and initiate transformational journeys towards sustained business growth. Consistently underpinned by the mantra, "The more you muck about, the more you’re going to find out."