What this is
Short, sequenced and costed strategy that a team can start on Monday. Business model shifts and pivots. Transformation programmes, including the ones already eighteen months in and not yet visible in the numbers. And the platform decisions that quietly constrain all of it.
What usually brings people here
A business that has grown by adding channels, tools and campaigns without a spine. Everything works a little, nothing compounds, and no two people describe the priority the same way. Or a programme on plan by its own reporting and invisible in the commercial numbers.
Where transformation fails
On subtraction. Plans are lists of things to start and almost never contain a list of things to stop. So the new process runs alongside the old one, capacity halves, delivery slows, and the diagnosis becomes adoption. When people look resistant to change, it is worth checking whether they were given the change or simply given more.
What I do
I read the commercial numbers and the customer journey together, find where the two disagree, and build a sequence from there. Fewer initiatives, ordered so each one frees the capacity for the next. Then I write the subtraction list, which is shorter than the roadmap, more predictive of success, and considerably harder to write because every item on it belongs to someone.
On platforms
A platform problem is almost always a priority problem. Selections get run as technical evaluations with a commercial signature at the end, which is backwards. What it costs to operate once the project team has gone, what it locks you out of in year two, and whether the team you actually have can run it on a Tuesday afternoon in December. Those decide it, and none of them appear on a feature matrix.
Where this comes from
My executive MBA specialisation was digital leadership, platform economics and transformation. Before that I was a partner in an early platform business built on freemium, micro payments and partnership revenue, which was platform economics in practice rather than in theory.