The 5 ‘P’s of Strategic Engagement
After a very chilled out soft launch of Crazy Might Work in Antarctica early this year, we turned up the energy for our first strategy forum ‘Launching your Strategy with a Bang!’ in February 2015.
Bringing together some of the best strategic minds around town, and using the formal launch of Crazy Might Work as a real time case study, we engaged in a fascinating conversation around the event’s key theme: what it takes to launch a strategic planning process with impact, interest and engagement.
We chose the Qantas Centre of Service Excellence as the venue for this experiment, specifically for its powerful surprise factor, as the deceptively dowdy exterior hides an exciting, start-of–the-art training facility.
The dramatic ‘reveal’ of the Qantas facility was preceded by a short video of the launch in Antarctica, in which Paul Hawkins explained the purpose of Crazy Might Work and demonstrated the first of 5 essential ingredients for creating engaging strategies: Passion.
After a short tour of the facility and injecting sufficient caffeine to overcome the early start, our strategists donned Crazy Might Work aprons, symbolising everyone’s active Participation in the forum and highlighting it as the second ingredient for serious engagement.
Having reached the roundtable for our forum discussion, we were treated to a demonstration of the latest and greatest in virtual reality, courtesy of Trent Clews-de Castella (Co-Founder and CEO, Scann3d), followed by a brief discussion of its potential applications across a range of industries. Trent’s demonstration provided the stimulus around our third principle of engaging strategy, which is Provocation.
Paul initiated the roundtable discussion by calling out the first three ‘P’s’ of engaging strategy and outlining the fourth ‘P’: Progression. Emphasising the importance of illuminating the road ahead and the plan to get there, he ran through Crazy’s own schedule of planned strategy forums, so that everyone could envision the proposed journey that we would embark on together.
As the group reflected on the activities to that point, particularly Trent’s session, our attention was drawn to the fact that around 80% of our natural communication relies on visual cues and that the largest single chunk of our brains is dedicated to the processing of images. This led us to the final aspect of truly engaging strategy, which is that it must be largely communicated through visual means. Hence the fifth ‘P’ which is Portrayal.
We had some wonderful contributions from the group on each of the 5 ‘P’s of Engaging Strategy. We have hand picked some of our favourite ideas, examples and quotes from the conversation. Those, as well as Trent’s super cool doll house recreation of the Qantas facility can be viewed in our online member’s area.
Overall it was a great morning shared with some great minds. We are looking forward to doing it all again very soon at our next forum: Iconic, Inspirational and Innovative Strategies at Madame Tussauds on 26 March 2015!
If you would like to join us at our next event, get in touch!
Until next time….