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"Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.” - ABJ Abdul Kalam Why, Why, Why? - we need to get to the heart of the matter if we are truly going to set the right direction.
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Now we have set the scene in the Background Step with the Overview of the Organisation and Context of the current situation we need to summarise key aspects of the Problem Statement.
We do this by using the technique of identifying a number of Strategic Drivers.
Perhaps a good way of thinking about this is to look at the Dangers and Opportunities that you are facing at the moment and that need to be taken into consideration when creating the strategy.
When you consider Dangers think about the issues that are impacting you but try to synthesise the issues into a more comprehensive sort of Root Cause Strategic Driver.
It may be that you feel that your Products and Services are not meeting what the market is expecting, or that your fulfillment processes do not afford the customer a level of insight as to when they might receive their order.
Also consider Opportunities that you are missing out on.
Ensuring that you take a 360-degree view and ensure that you do not get bogged down in Issues will require facilitation.
You can challenge each viewpoint put forward with the simple questions “Why is this important?” to try to get to root causes.
Other drivers might relate to new markets that you feel that you want to move into, new products, new GTM, new partners etc.
You may capture many Strategic Drivers and it is best to capture all the points raised from your sessions as you can revisit them as you progress.
PLOT is an interactive modelling tool such that whilst we do proceed through a sequence of steps you can always revisit a prior step and refine past decisions.
Please watch the following video where I show you how to define the Strategic Drivers in PLOT.