We used to have strategy sessions in the past that always turned into 2 or 3-day ‘free-for-alls’: good discussions, but unstructured and therefore never reached a conclusion. We were looking for three things to keep our next strategic discussions on track: a structure, strong facilitation, and an independent, nonbiased view to balance people’s pet ideas and passions. Other consultants have structured methods, but that alone can be too rigid and constraining. STRATEGOS provided the right level of structure to guide the discussion, enough room to explore topics fully, but discipline to bring us to conclusions. 

Since the sessions, we have taken decisive action on the basis of the decisions STRATEGOS helped us reach. The detail behind the strategy has been robustly blown out. We have acceler-ated decisions on key investments (including rapidly accelerating an emerging technology critical to the clarified strategy). The top-level strategy and actions have been develop-ed into a new group identity (NS Food Innovation), new communication materials, and a broad training program.

The lasting impact on our organization has been to think of strategy as the description of what the business is about, the benefit being it focuses discussions about the details of how and by whom this is achieved. Pre-viously we had mixed these elements together in our discussions. 

Another legacy has been that the group is now much more crisp about “what’s in” and “what’s out” of our business model (i.e., decisions have clarified business scope). ”

Neil Grimwood
Senior Divisional Vice President
Food Starch, US