Run a UX Strategy Meeting
A clear-cut strategy is indispensable for companies aiming to achieve their long-term objectives.
A strategy is a road map that guides a business from its current position to its desired destination. For this article, let’s look at how Uber structured itself. Uber’s strategy is founded on four cornerstone principles:
Offering an array of services tailored to diverse customer needs.
Ensuring supreme user convenience through seamless app-based transactions.
Leveraging technological innovations to reduce costs.
Fueling growth by acquiring companies within its business ecosystem.
These pillars encapsulate Uber’s market vision and the necessary actions for its realization. This strategic blueprint is what every business needs to succeed, and that’s where strategy meetings or workshops come into play.
So, what constitutes a strategy meeting?
A strategy meeting is a unique gathering that enables stakeholders to focus exclusively on strategy, separate from routine operations. These meetings can serve various purposes, like defining new strategies, reviewing the current trajectory, generating innovative ideas, establishing benchmarks, and more.
The specific aim of a strategy meeting can vary based on the attendees – a meeting with top executives and board members would have a different objective than a strategy workshop conducted by the marketing team.
Strategy workshops serve as a platform where stakeholders collaborate and contribute to the company’s strategic path.
Which raises the question:
Who should attend a strategy meeting?
Your end goals will dictate the attendees of your strategy meeting. If you’re discussing the company’s overall strategy, including C-suite executives, department heads, and project managers overseeing strategic projects is wise. Data specialists are also valuable if your meeting involves data review and discussion.
However, not all strategy sessions must encompass the entire organization’s strategy. They can be confined to departmental or team-level strategies as well. For instance, a workshop with the marketing team could involve only the relevant team leaders. In these cases, the attendees are those involved at the respective team level.
The primary criterion for attendee selection should be their relevance to the meeting’s strategic focus. Remembering that these sessions should not be cluttered with day-to-day tasks or operational issues is essential.
The objective of your strategy workshop should guide you in determining the ideal guest list.
What outcomes should you anticipate from a strategy session, and how to ensure they’re realized beyond the meeting?
The primary goal of a strategy meeting is to blend strategic thought with execution planning. The focus is not on daily tasks but on devising an overarching action plan to channel resources toward the strategic objectives.
To ensure the strategies are effectively implemented, it’s vital to convert the outcomes into actionable items, allocate responsibilities, and set a timeline. The success of your initiatives can then be measured against clearly defined metrics.
At a high level, here’s a five-step process to help you plan and execute a successful strategy meeting:
Clearly outline the purpose of your strategy workshop and the outcomes you hope to achieve.
Develop a well-structured agenda including objectives, timing for each activity, icebreakers, breaks, and a session summarizing outcomes and action steps.
Gather the required data and materials based on the workshop’s goals. This might include presentations, competitor analysis, and other tools or props for the activities.
Invite the key stakeholders and communicate the objectives, the agenda, the duration, and the expectations from the meeting.
Ensure everyone leaves with a clear understanding of the meeting outcomes, action steps, assigned responsibilities, and next steps.
The choice of exercises for your workshop depends on your specific goals, but some options include retrospective exercises, problem-framing exercises, icebreakers, ideation exercises, and decision-making exercises.
I hope this guide provides a helpful introduction to planning and running a strategy workshop. Remember, the key to a successful workshop is clear goals, a structured agenda, adequate preparation, engaged stakeholders, and actionable outcomes.
Keep strategizing!
Interested in more?
Check out my introductory workshop from Black Tech Week 2023.
