Strategy Survival Guide

Structuring the thinking - Creativity techniques
In Practice: SU Workforce Development Project
Towards the end of the analysis phase of the Workforce Development project the team organised an
away day to begin the transition towards policy formation. Through the related worlds exercise the team
alighted on the comparison of Workforce Development with that of health and fitness. Despite being
considered 'good for you’, participation in exercise and trends in healthy eating seem to have boomed in
recent years. How had this been achieved and what lessons might be learnt for WfD policies around
motivation, incentives and strategies to stimulate demand for training and skills development?
Initially a brainstorm on the characteristics of the health and fitness market and attitudes towards it threw
up some useful insights into drivers of demand, for example:
Health and fitness:
• seems to have become fashionable/a status symbol
• wide variations in participation and cultures: young professionals vs. the couch potato
• growing market in healthy eating - many consumers are prepared to pay more for 'organic’ foods
perceived as higher quality and not mass produced or necessarily homogenous
• expression of interest - fitness can often be overridden by other commitments and time pressures
(or these are blamed when real motivation is lacking)
• scare tactics have been important in changing mindsets (heart disease, smoking etc) but they
only work with some people
• it’s the outcome that sells the product as the process itself is not intrinsically attractive: "if it
makes you thin, rich and sexy it will sell".
Next, ideas around how health and fitness might be further encouraged in the future were explored.
These ranged from scientific advances enabling us to produce healthy ice cream and pizza to
incentivising employees to cycle to work by providing those who do with a 'free (organic) lunch’.
Thinking about a related world was refreshing for the team as it emerged from the intense analysis
phase. The exercise provided the space and stimulation to throw new light on what drives peoples’
behaviour. The ideas that came out of the session had a direct bearing on some of the principles that
informed the project’s final recommendations, for example:
• The need for training provision to be responsive to consumer need and not 'mass produced’ or
'homogenous’ in the way it is designed and delivered
Training isn’t very ‘sexy’: need to focus on and sell the outcomes rather than the process. The message
can be positive but can also come down to scare tactics - "train or else" - especially in terms of business
innovation and competitiveness.
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
Page 112