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