How To Conduct A Key Issues Review

1. Start with ‘Straw Dog’ Vision Statement to help frame where you want to go.
2. Analysis: Top 3 Drivers, Inhibitors, Risk & Opportunities.
3. Summarize the Brand Health vs. Wealth, cutting it at both Internal and External.
4. Then using the ‘straw dog’ vision as a beacon and the analysis to explain what’s happening; Brainstorm all the things getting in the way of you achieving your vision.  You might come up with a list of 10=20 issues.  Group them, narrow them, sort them.
5. Vote to Narrow to the top 3-5 Key Issues.

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Straw Dog Vision Statement

A straw dog vision is really a big huge goal.  Put yourself in your shoes 5-10 years out, and ask yourself what would the 3 things you want to have achieved on that date?  What would give you a sense of accomplishment?  I use the ‘straw dog’ version more as a place holder at this point, and would keep re-fining the vision through the long-range strategic planning process.  The role of the vision within the Key Issues process is to open yourself up beyond the current day-to-day muck and get you to think bigger.  This allows the issues to become bigger and more strategic.

Force Field Analysis

There are a few possible options you can use, but for real live businesses, I prefer the Force FIeld analysis:  What are the factors currently driving your business?   What are the factors inhibiting your business?   The drivers are about momentum that you are seeing on your business and you want to keep going.   The inhibitors are the things holding you back and need to be reversed or knocked down.  Always keep in mind, these two factors are happening now.

When you then layer in the Opportunities and Threats, these are not happening, but could happen.  The opportunities could be things such as new markets you want to enter, new technologies or an untapped area you’re seeing. You want to raise these ideas and opportunities to management in an assertive selling way. Threats have to be real, not pie in the sky maybe’s.  These could be competitors coming into the market, changes in regulations and changing customer behavior.

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Actions coming out of the Force Field

• For drivers, you want to Continue/Enhance:  Stay focused on things going right, keep accelerating and driving them.   Continuous improvement.
• For inhibitors, you want to Minimize/Reverse.  Close the leaks, develop turnaround plans or re-focus the team against the trend.
• You want to Take Advantage of the Opportunities.  Build plans to mobilize the brand to see if the opportunity is a winning space for the brand.
• For the Threats, you want to Avoid or build Contingency plans.  Identify and measure the risk, explore plans to avoid.   Fill the gap before a competitor.

For new businesses that are yet in the market, I might switch it up so that Drivers become Strengths that speaks to the assets we’re bringing to the market and Inhibitors become Weaknesses that showcase potential gaps in the business.  Another good analysis for a brand that is impacted severely by the environment is a PEST analysis where you look at the Political, Economic, Social and Technological.  

Deep dive on each Driver and each Inhibitor

Narrow down your list of inhibitors and then a best-in-class deck would blow out the details around each driver and inhibitor with a page or two for each.  Looking at the example below, of a one-page explanation behind an Inhibitor, you want 4 key attributes on the one pager:

• List out the Driver/inhibitor
• Use a key visual or chart that showcases the data and facts behind the driver/inhibitor.
• Tell the fact-based story with 2-3 argument points.
• In the box at the bottom, you should call out a potential action to address this driver and inhibitor.

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Brand Health and Wealth

A great analysis I recommend is to do a Brand Health vs Brand Wealth.   Think of the wealth as things you can see connected to things like sales, shares, margins or profits.  For Health, it’s the things you can’t see, like trial, repeat, processes etc.  just like a human, you can’t judge the health just by looking at someone.  You need to dig deep and understand below the surface.  Breaking it this way gives us four key boxes

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• External Health: Connecting with consumers is a source of power for brands. Understand the brand funnel and It’s impact on the results. How your consumer sees your brand, starting at awareness, trial, repeat all the way down the brand funnel to brand loyalty.  Build on your strengths and attack your weaknesses
• External Wealth: Healthy win in the marketplace.  Beloved Brands can leverage success into power and drive wealth.   Beloved Brands are more efficient, higher sales, lower costs, better margins, higher over all profits.
• Internal Health: What is the internal beacon that helps  all employees get it and live it.  The idea of the brand has to be embedded right into the culture in a consistent manner. They have to realize their impact on the end customer.
• Internal Wealth:  Everyone focused on Profit and Value.  Assets, IP, culture, contracts, ownership. Lining up and delivering the brand promise to a clear set of objectives, helps employees see that they are contributing to and sharing in the brand wealth.   Everyone should understand where and how they impact profitability.

A great example of why breaking it out this way is crucial is Apple in Q4 of 2012.  if we look at traditional measures, Apple had their highest sales ever, share  increased across all products, margins reached an all-time high, and yet we have to look at the Brand Health to see the stock price came crumbling down.  Apple’s innovation has slowed down, the intensity of feelings among the most loyal consumers has slipped due to challenges from Samsung and they seem to lack an internal alignment going forward.  Clearly the wealth of Apple exceeds the health, so the stock price began to reflect.

Key Issues

• Too Low:  How do we get more helicopters into Iraq?  This is too specific or too small.  Think about it, if there are other ways to get to the same goal (e.g. you could get more tanks) then the issue is too small.
• Too High:  How do we drive Peace in the Middle East?  This is aspiration, but unrealistic.  If it feels too much to chew off, then it’s too big of an issue.
• Just Right:  What’s the most effective way to change Regimes in Iraq?  This talks closer to the overall objective…but with enough room to give strategic alternatives

Following the Gray’s Cookie Case Study example, here are the three Key Issues.

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The Power of Three’s:

When I do these workshops, I force my teams tio use three’s whether it’s the driver and inhibitors or more importantly the Key Issues.  I like to see the teams focus more.  Forcing it down to 3 only might push them to look at the over-arching issues by looking bigger causes and issues than they first look at.

But most importantly, we ask the Key Issues in question format because the answer to that question is the strategy.  So, if you narrow it down to the biggest 3 issues that lines you up to having 3 big strategies.  I also recommend 3 tactics per strategy. That means, the Brand will have 9 major projects to spread the financial and people resources.  Even if you had 5 strategies and 5 tactics under each, you’d exponentially be up to 25 key projects.  I would bet that the quality on the execution of the 9 would exceed the execution of the 25 on the other brand.

Asking the Big Questions Leads to Big Strategies and Big Results

photo credit: ScoRDS via photopin cc