How can we use our intuition in building strategic stories?
In my previous article, I talked about the whole value creation process and the beginning of the process, “intuition utilization”.
1) Intuition of a strategy story :
Use meta-consciousness/intuitive consciousness to capture inspiration that leads to a strategic story to realize the vision.
The whole value creation process is shown here.
Utilizing intuition is important for strategy story planning.
In order to help you understand these six processes, I would like to not only give you an overview of each process, but also introduce you to some specific examples.
As a concrete example of “ Intuition of a Strategy Story”, I would like to pick up the strategy of a training business for a large corporation in our company about five years ago. Our company provides services mainly to large corporations with more than 1,000 employees. Although the level of service demanded by large corporations is high, if we are able to meet their requirements, the amount of business per company is high and the repeat rate is high, making it easy to establish business with them.
Until about five years ago, we had assumed that we would provide face-to-face employee development services, but when we returned to the concept of focusing on training outcomes, we sometimes felt that face-to-face services alone were insufficient, and we were considering the creation of new value elements.
As a result, the business acquisition of an e-learning platform (LMS=Learning Management System) called etudes in 2019 has paved the way for us to do so. In addition to providing face-to-face training services, we are now able to combine e-learning or LMS service delivery, changing our service delivery format from “dots to lines”.
In some respects, the acquisition of etudes’ business made it possible to create this new value, but in fact, even before we started talking about the acquisition, we knew that we needed a new value element in our strategic story: a place for continuous learning through the use of information systems.
In order to help you understand the first process of value creation, “ Intuition of a Strategic Strategy Story”, I would like to talk about it in detail using this case study.
To use intuition, it is important to have appropriate quests(questions)
In my previous article, I mentioned that it is important to have a “quest(question)” in order to utilize intuition.
At the time, I sensed the following changes at the industry level. (Taking a bird’s eye view of the flow of consciousness dimension in the entire industry and society)
Flow of consciousness dimension in the education industry
・With the evolution of technology such as machine learning, people are beginning to see the potential of individually optimized education (from collective and uniform learning to individually optimized learning).
・The importance of continuous learning and re-learning is beginning to be recognized in the age of 100 years of life (from temporary learning to continuous learning).
The concept of our strategy story is to focus on training outcomes. Education is characterized by the fact that it is an intangible product and that its results are difficult to see. The effects of education can be short term or medium to long term. Some are easy to see, such as behavior and results, while others are hard to see, such as changes in attitude.
Despite these characteristics, our position and concept is that it is possible to clarify the outcomes of training from several perspectives and be committed to those outcomes. Although the industry as a whole recognizes the importance of visualizing the outcomes of training, there has been little progress in terms of specific initiatives for several decades.
I believe that this is where the “partiality of consciousness” lies. Although many people believe that it is better to visualize the outcomes of training as much as possible and conduct trial and error to improve the outcomes, concrete efforts are rarely made due to the stereotypical view that the outcomes of training are difficult to see.
Our concept of “focusing on training outcomes” has led to the resolution of the “partiality of consciousness” at the industry level.
Once we have captured the trends at the industry level and clarified our own concept, we can ask the following quests(questions) to create new value in our strategic story.
Quests(Questions) for creating value in the strategy story in our training business for a major company five years ago.
▼ In the industry-wide trend of “individualized learning instead of collective and uniform learning” and “continuous learning instead of temporary learning,”
▼ in order to realize and evolve the concept of “focusing on training outcomes”.
▼ what do we want to be? ( what does the world want us to do? )
When we spend time with these questions in mind, ideas may suddenly come to us. Or, in a company meeting or other situation, we may get a hint from someone’s comment, “Oh, I like that idea.”
By clarifying the “quests(questions),” it will be easier for us to naturally become aware of it, or for various information to be caught by our antennae.
In our case, having these questions in mind led to the following ideas.
Inspired and realized ideas
・Development of a survey to help trainees analyze themselves and clarify the outcomes of their training
・A system to follow up on the action plan after the training
・Mechanisms and systems for continuous review of personal growth
・E-learning platforms and e-learning development
・English learning system in which the more a trainee does, the more his/her curriculum becomes individually optimized
・Overseas training where feedback is individualized based on daily reflections
Finally, I would like to talk about what “quests(questions)” are. A quest(question) is “what one wants to clarify by focusing one’s consciousness while connecting to what one wants to be and the subjective truth. The point is that it is connected to the way we want to be and to our subjective truth, and in that sense it is different from an “issue.”
An issue is “something that needs to be answered,” and has a worldview that perceives things objectively. In order to use intuition in value creation, it is recommended to have “quests(questions)” instead of “issues.”
If we think of it as a question, it becomes a nuance of “What do we want to do to realize our concept?” On the other hand, if we see it as an issue, we are more likely to come up with an objective point of view that says, “What should we do based on the results of our analysis of the market and competition?”
The former, “quests(questions),” is more likely to activate the intuitive consciousness and lead to new and innovative ideas. The latter, “issues,” is more likely to activate the thinking consciousness, and although it can be used for detailed analysis and verification, it is not suitable for idea generation.
In this article, I talked about “utilizing intuition,” which is the first process of value creation in a strategy story, using specific examples. In the next article, I will talk about “ethnography.”
Here are the quests of the day. (If you’d like, please share your thoughts in the comments.)
・How do you think you can best use “quests(questions)” and “issues” together in your work?
・If you were to make a quest(question) for creating new value in the business you are involved in, what kind of quest(question) would it be?
Bunshiro Ochiai
