Strategic Thinking Exercise: What's Missing in what Your Brand Offers?

At an Idea Magnets workshop, we shared a strategic thinking exercise we call Rock-Paper-Scissors. We employ it to categorize what your company or department is currently offering based on:

• Things that add incredible value for your audience
• Things that don’t add incredible value, but could if they received more attention and resources
• Things that once created incredible value, but no longer do, and are ripe for major modifications or for being eliminated

In the post-workshop evaluation, one attendee asked about extending this strategic thinking exercise to identify things you aren’t currently doing that you should be doing. The individual asking the question suggested it as a fourth element of the Rock-Paper-Scissors strategic thinking exercise (perhaps as Rock Number 2).

Picking up on the suggestion, here is a starting list of questions that could start to answer this important fourth question about what’s missing within your offerings:

• What have customers been asking about forever that no one will deliver for them?
• If you weren’t constrained by whatever you think your current constraint is, what would you provide to customers because it’s the right thing to do?
• If you moved backward in your product/service delivery process, what would you start to do to create stronger benefits for customers?
• If you moved forward in your product/service delivery process, what would to begin offering to customers to enhance how you deliver benefits to them?
• Ask a client: If you were running our company / department, what would you be doing? (You may get lucky on this one, but don’t bet on it. Customers aren’t paid to do your thinking for you.)

This one is definitely in the Brainzooming R&D Lab! We’ve used most of these questions in other settings, but not integrated as a fourth part of Rock-Paper-Scissors. We’ll try it out soon and see how it works to complement what is an already-proven strategic thinking exercise for Brainzooming clients. – Mike Brown