Strategy Builder: How to create and communicate more effective strategies

WHAT STRATEGY BUILDER DOES

Most people find the way that strategy is communicated and developed off-putting and disengaging. However, this isn't the case when people discuss and draw strategic ideas and developments collectively at a whiteboard. This makes sense: people like being involved in building things. Rather than dwell on strategy's negative connotations, we have identified a range of opportunities for a revolutionary way of developing and communicating strategy. The strengths of drawing make it an ideal vehicle with which to respond to these opportunities.

Drawing can be an alternative to conventional strategy presentation: a third mode of pictorializing strategy that could provide a missing link between overwrought Word documents and oversimplified PowerPoints. Drawing can aid collective understanding in ways that can help break down conventional barriers between people who should feel engaged in strategy development and implementation. The ability to convey complex ideas and new possibilities through drawing has already been proved in other spheres. Drawing's potential for promoting innovation based on proven frameworks and prototyping fits well with new directions in how we teach business, such as design thinking. Finally, the fact that drawings can aid memory retention and promote good decision-making and an action orientation could be a useful way of overcoming the overload and subsequent inertia that can stem from people feeling overwhelmed with information relating ...