Growth strategy

Situation

After years of consolidation, merger integrations, cost cutting programs, an insurance company had to come back on a growth path. The economical environment of a cut-throat competition was a real challenge. In addition the Executive Committee had very diverse opinions on what a growth strategy should look like.

It was originally planned to run a large group workshop with about 60 participants to develop a concrete strategy for profitable growth. However, it became clear that we couldn’t go directly for the large group workshop as long as we didn’t resolve fundamental issues within the Executive Committee.

Approach

The project approach was complemented by an Executive WS upfront to work out and align on the frame conditions. It was important that the 12 top managers could share their perspectives and discuss openly their ideas without worrying about losing authority or balancing trade offs.

At the same time the top leadership team had the opportunity to get to know a new interactive and collaborative methodology. They could much better imagine how the large group workshop would run in terms of process and also emotional elements. The preparation for the Executive Workshop was focusing on analysis around the potential of various growth areas.

Result

After 2 days of intensive work the priorities on the focus growth areas were aligned. Only those were up for discussion in the large group workshop later on. During preparation, the project team did a targeted research on these selected growth areas and checked out potential scenarios on products and services.

The Executive WS produced clear preparation tasks to allow good and fact based discussions during the large-group-workshop. The most important outcome though was, that the leadership team was fully aligned around the playground and guidelines for the growth strategy. This was a big benefit with regard to working with the larger team later on.