This is the continuation of my article series. After being forced by COVID to follow our dreams, I described the preparations we made before we started the company changeover.
Following our decision to “crossfade” kreait from a service-oriented company to a product only company, we needed a suitable plan, on which I want to focus today.
Such a fundamental change is a psychological challenge in itself for all souls involved. Not only will the business model be restructured entirely, but this restructuring will take place at all levels. Everything is being adapted: from the shareholders’ agreement to the business model to the company structure, to the products offered, and what is even more challenging: we need to make sure that the coming changes match the existing team-skills, in addition to the mindset and culture of the company. We knew about the failed transformations; hence we were very cautious in a lot of aspects.
We were and are aware of those fundamental changes, and we knew that we needed to be as transparent as possible and let every one of our team know their role in our joint journey. Having a clear picture of every step would help us to conquer all of this.
We did an all-hands presenting the “Phoenix” project and explained with as much detail as possible what we’re going to do.
Let’s define a few notations we are going to use first.
Problem vs Challenge
Checking dictionary.com we see a fundamental difference in both notations:
A problem is something difficult to handle or a source of the difficulty, which typically paints a very discouraging picture.
A challenge is different at its core: it is a matter of empowerment.
Problems are blocking. Challenges want to be overcome.
A challenge is an opportunity for success and growth. Suppose we approach an obstacle as a challenge rather than a problem. In that case, we retain the power to respond to it and influence, if not determine, the outcome.
Why concentrate on the root cause, the target group and the context instead of just generating ideas for new products?
The biggest hurdle in pivoting a company or starting a new endeavour is not generating ideas or products. It is identifying the real problem. In the very beginning, concentrating on the problem itself is more important than already thinking about solutions.
I recommend reading Marius Ursache’s Article on this wholeheartedly. He’s doing a fantastic job in explaining why understanding the problem is more important than the solution.
Understanding the challenge you want to work on is the most crucial aspect of a fundamental transformation.
In addition to identifying a problem, we needed to know who was having that problem: what impact does a problem have on whom? Is it an emotional challenge or a financial one? Does it affect individuals, groups of people, or a whole society? What causes the problem?
Hence, the goal of our first phase must be finding the real challenge, target groups, their context and the root cause of the problem.
So what did we do?
We took the liberty to use Marius’ problem statement as the boilerplate for our Challenge Statement Canvas.
Now that we had a structure to investigate and understand potential challenges, we gathered a few general topics and accompanying questions to give an idea to the team what a challenge statement could look like.
We encouraged our colleagues, family and friends to hand in their challenge statements covering other problems and topics than already presented. The topics ranged from logistics and travel to diversity and freedom of speech.
How do we proceed?
We outlined the overall process for all our colleagues.
But who is going to work on this? We had a few people working on our agency mandates and the rest of the colleagues on Kurzarbeit. Kurzarbeit or KUG is an instrument in Germany to reduce working time due to considerable loss of work in the company. The reduced time, hence reduced salary as well, will be compensated by the Agentur für Arbeit (Employment Agency).
Exclusivity of Teams
We defined three Teams:
- The Agency Team worked on existing mandates, and we agreed that we wouldn’t do business development anymore nor accept new inquiries.
- The KUG Team were our colleagues on Kurzarbeit (Short-Time Work).
- The Product Team was the one working for our company pivot, hence the first Phase.
The next day after the all-hands meeting, the Product Team had its kickoff and started working on the challenge statements.
Evaluation of Challenge Statements
We received numerous challenge statements from our colleagues, family members, friends and even business friends and partners in our inbox. The challenge statements ranged from mental health, individual travel to freedom of speech and digital discourse. I am incredibly thankful, that not only my team believed in our change, but even more that they demonstrated their beliefs by providing challenges very dear to them, such as pregnancy and paternity, and supporting businesses in their local neighbourhoods.
I want to use one of the challenges I proposed to show how we have approached this. I can already anticipate that this has not become our new topic. 😉
I had to present the challenge to the rest of the team, after which someone else iterated on it to benefit from a different perspective.
It was mind-blowing what others (in this case Sören) came up with thinking about the same challenge from their viewpoint, sometimes collaboratively with other colleagues, family and/or friends”.
The iterations allowed us to determine if a topic needed to be broadened or narrowed down to something more tangible. We then started the evaluation based on porters five forces, but tweaked the five forces a bit to our needs and added a few sub-dimensions.
Evaluating the challenge statements was not too easy, especially when there was no domain knowledge in our team with the topic. I am incredibly thankful that we received tons of help from our families and friends, who do know respective fields.
Selection of our challenge statement
Out of a few dozen challenge statements, we dropped a few every day, until we had ten left, into which we deep-dived, including questions like
- Capabilities Match: Do we think our capabilities match the desired challenge environments and hurdles?
- Desire Match: Does the challenge and its possible solutions match our interest and desire, topic- and technology-wise?
We had planned two weeks for the challenge selection but extended it to three weeks due to the unexpected amount of proposed and good challenges
After applying our evaluation matrix based on Porters Five Forces and the Phoenix 360° Assessment, there were three challenges left on our shortlist.
We agreed with the team that the management team, especially the two shareholders of our company, will be deciding about the challenge we will work on in our second phase.
In my next article, I will outline the second stage, in which our product team was working on from the end of July to end of August 2020: The Solution Ideation (Solution Routes Definition)
If you have feedback on the story so far or comments and suggestions, please let me know, I’d greatly appreciate it!
(Again a huge thank you to Jérôme Gamez supporting me with these articles!)
