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donald mcmichael

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Strategic Value: What Do You Bring To The Table?

May 17, 2010 by Donald McMichael

A few months ago I started using the tagline ‘solves the tough[est] problems’. The use of a branding tagline is not the story. Companies have been at this for centuries and people have earned them since the beginning of time… think John the Great. What interested me during the development  and testing process was how people gravitated towards versions that included a ‘provide answers’ aspect. This isn’t shocking for everybody wants answers – often ‘the’ magic answer – to their problems. So much so that it is business tenant number one, fill a market’s need or solve it’s problem.

Design thinking… what is that?

The value behind an answer is the systematic approach used to identify the solution, like design thinking.  Design thinking consists of four key elements:

  1. defining the right problem to solve
  2. create and consider many options
  3. embraced a promising handful of promising and give them the chance to grow, no matter how obvious the solution may seem
  4. pick the winner, execute

The Secret Sauce

This suggests that instead of the worrying over the right answer one should be focused on asking the right questions. Answers, in isolation, are rigid. Questions, or more precisely a process of using key questions to produce answers, is an approach that can yield the right answer no matter the current environment.

5 Second Pitch

So does this mean that when people ask me what I do I’ll launch into my solution process talking about business models and how I help organizations exploit their assets? Not on your life, I tell them the value I bring and to whom…create meaningful results for media and entertainment concerns who have to navigate disruption and want to turning change into opportunity. However, don’t rule out ‘ask the tough questions’. Irregardless of whatever five second flash headline I give, as a conversation matures people find comfort in knowing that there is substance behind the glitz.

illustration credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crystaljingsr/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Filed Under: blog, Business Management Tagged With: Business Management, design

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Insights for entrepreneurial leaders that help them answer two fundamental questions "Where should we play?" and "How do we win?".

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