Gamification of Strategy and My Experience

Unicorn status is a coveted position when a company hits the valuation of USD 1 BN. Last Tuesday I had an interesting Business Transformation Simulation session organized by the strategy tools team(https://www.linkedin.com/company/strategy-tools/) by Christian Rangen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianrangen/), Global Strategy Advisor, Transformational Leader, and Thinker.

The Challenge was to grow a company with USD 5MN revenue to a 50BN valuation in 5 years through business transformation. This was an immersive and intense session with 7 teams competing over 8 hrs through a zoom session. Each team had executives from different industries, experiences playing the role of CEO, CSO, CFO, and Innovation Manager. This is to get a taste of how the business should pursue transformation, strategic choices, decisions to be made, challenges to address, and many other real-life business scenarios. I played the role of CEO of a mobility software solutions company with a vision to transform into an autonomous mobility solution provider. All through 8 hours it was fun learning, insights, and how the companies are scaled up. I am sharing my learnings and thoughts through this write-up. The below learnings are not in any specific order and the list is not complete. Growth is a choice available to all but it can only be realized through disciplined, consistent, and faster execution. 1. The idea of the firm - Its important for the organization/startups to understand whats their idea about the firm and how would they like to be known. For Example, would you call Tesla Car market or Mobility Solution Provider? 2.Identify current industrial shifts and transformation needed to be Successful. Assessing your current status and how difficult or easy for you to adopt will be a good place to start. 3.Focus on Core Growth and Explore approach when scaling. Its important to find a balance between your current core business focus, immediate growth opportunities (1-2 years) to explore (2+ years). Todays growth/explore opportunities will become your core business in 3 years time. 4.Organizations need to put in place a Transformation architecture to pursue growth and explore opportunities. Partnering, Co-investing, Co-Developing are some of the options to consider apart from building internally and merger/acquisitions. 5. In the VUCA world, all of us have very limited information, a lot can change overnight. Building faster and efficient decisions with limited information is a new/essential skill to develop. 6. Capital markets/analysts relations are key, especially in larger organizations. The value creation potential is an important metric than current year revenue/profit. 7. Be aggressive and diligent in your growth strategy. Many organizations look at growth purely from the organic perspective and that needs to change. 8. Market crash/downtime is common. Building business resilience to quickly adapt will be key to sustain and thrive. Some times waiting for the worst times to be over is also a good strategy. 9.Your next competitor will not be from your industry. They can come from anywhere and take you by surprise. Hence thinking in the arena instead of the industry will be the need of the day. I have simplified key points and for each, one can write separate blog posts.The fun part was we had the most the action in the last 30 mins of 8h session. Understanding the transformation journey and ready to implement ideas were key takeaways.  We are currently in the process of thinking how this gamification of strategy can be brought to MSMEs in India.  Unlock growth with strategy gamification! 🚀

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