FAST Campaigns
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008Reading John Hagel way way back in 2003, he advocates a FAST strategy for B2B
Long term strategy is dead in the water (who knows what markets will be doing in 5 years?)
Here’s what he suggests around three key themes (Accelerate, Strengthen, Tie it all Together)
On the six to twelve month horizon, Accelerate and Strengthen are the key requirements. By Accelerate, I mean identifying a few key operating initiatives that have the potential to significantly accelerate the movement of the company towards the long-term Focus.
On the same time horizon, Strengthen also comes into play. Here, management needs to ask, what are the major organizational obstacles that are preventing us from moving even faster to achieve our operational objectives? Then the question becomes, what can be done over the next six to twelve months to “de-bottleneck” the organization and strengthen our organizational capabilities so that we can move even faster in the next six to twelve month cycle?
Tie it all together integrates these three streams of activities.
And I can really see applications for this approach in some work I’ve been doing this week. This is tied in with Anthony Mayfield’s comments
John Seely Brown’s ideas about FAST strategy and how loose coalitions of small teams can be the most effective way to organise.
And so yesterday I belatedly edited some copy for an advert, adapting from Australian English to UK (hillarious…… tag line was “Australian made for the world”. Really see that going down well in UK and US!). And I sent it off….But started thinking about an exhibition / conference that the brand is visiting and whether I could do a competition to encourage stand visitors. When I came across some old notes about good things to do at exhibitions and conference. Make a door hanger tag that you can put on visitors doors overnight…. cool. Integrate with visiting stand idea. So I mentioned this to Di with whom we did a pre-Christmas campaign. And she was kind enough to tell me I was bonkers, but suggested some collaboration on selling her stuff on the exhibition stand to bring more people in….. and offering a great prize for the competition. And so I drafted a brief and sent it out to Alan and Leo. And Rachel .
She suggested a couple of improvements, specifically voting… and then I remembered Liz had run a funny campaign on comments last year. Maybe we could collaborate? But the need to get it done quickly [conference date is 25 Jan] drove me back to Skillfair, whose MD, Gill Hunt, I interviewed back end of last year… and I posted it up there for good measure too.
Small team. Collaborating. Moving quickly towards the mid-term objective.
Loved it. Cheers everyone!
[Aside….I did a Skype con call introducing Leo and Rachel last week. Interesting - they were both rather too polite to be free-thinking about their ideas. Like shy and rather too agreeing with me as opposed to debating and sparking objections and suggestions. Maybe too early to expect them to behave together as they do individually with me.]
