Taking Action on Competitive Strategy

A pioneer in business war gaming and an expert in developing custom simulation technologies for business and other organizations, Mark also presents highly interactive, highly rated, downright-fun workshops on strategy and strategic thinking, suitable for companies and conferences. He consults with Fortune 500 companies around the world, lectures at conferences and universities, and writes frequently on business and marketing strategy. This Powernoodle Solution was developed with the help of Powernoodle Expert: Mark Chussil 2 Mark Chussil is Founder and CEO of Advanced Competitive Strategies, Inc.

About Powernoodle With Powernoodle, your group will move through a structured process for sharing ideas, filtering and evaluating them to create a prioritized action plan. Powernoodle provides distinct advantages to your team:  Speed  Confidentiality  Candor  Efficiency This document will help you organize and facilitate a Powernoodle on Taking Action on Competitive Strategy. 3

What is Taking Action on Competitive Strategy? Effective strategic action is: Feasible (we can do it) Defensible (not vulnerable to counterattack) Credible (it is likely to succeed) Your group will identify and prioritize competitive-strategy actions that are feasible, defensible, and credible. 4

The Powernoodle Approach – Simple Yet Powerful In this Powernoodle, participants:  Nominate actions.  Combine the actions into categories.  Assess the actions on the three criteria: 1. Feasible: Can we realistically do it if we want to? 2. Defensible: How vulnerable is it to counterattack? 3. Credible: How likely is it to succeed? 5

Your first step is to clarify the overall objective of the strategy for which you want to take action. This objective becomes the basis for the Powernoodle session… “How do we…” “What are all the ways we can…” “What actions can we take that will…” Preparing Your Powernoodle 6

The Powernoodle Organizer’s job The Organizer creates the session, invites Participants, and leads the group through the Powernoodle steps: Brainstorm, Categorize, Combine, Vote, Rate, Prioritize, and Action Plan. Depending on the session’s purpose, the Organizer is able to customize the Powernoodle as needed. Every Powernoodle creates a Powernoodle Report, a complete record of the decision-making trail in a downloadable spreadsheet. 7

An In-House Team Leader? Advantages:  Holds valuable content knowledge  Understands your organization and how it operates Disadvantages:  Might be too busy organizing the sessions to participate fully  May not recognize biases An Outside Facilitator? Advantages:  Brings objectivity  Adds specialized facilitation knowledge - can keep the group on track and on time  Allows all participants to focus on the discussion Disadvantages:  Will need some background preparation 8 Select your Organizer

To get started, the Powernoodle Organizer:  Creates the Powernoodle Session.  Creates a Competitive-Strategy Actions Planning Question. What strategy actions will achieve our objective?  Invites all participants via into the Powernoodle Session. Your Powernoodle Session 9 Looking for more detailed directions? Watch the Organizer Training Series videos Looking for more detailed directions? Watch the Organizer Training Series videos

The Organizer’s Session Room 10 Explain the purpose of the session. This will also appear on the Agenda and the Invitation to Participants. Your group can work on one or several related questions in a session. List of invited Participants.

Brainstorm: Consider the Competitive Strategy Action question and contribute ideas. Comment on other participants’ ideas. Rate: Assess each possible Competitor Action idea on three criteria, with 0 = strongly disagree and 10 = strongly agree. We can realistically implement this if we want to. This is not vulnerable to counterattack. This is likely to succeed. Prioritise: Determine the most critical tactics using the following standard: “Knowing what I know today, this is how I would allocate our resources to achieve our objective.” Competitive Strategy Action Process 11

Rating gives nuanced assessment of likelihood of success. 12 Intuitive slider rating is customised by Organizer.

The Organizer generates the Powernoodle Report. The Report shows how the group evaluated the ideas to reach their decisions.  The Report is created automatically after your session ends.  It is available in spreadsheet format for you and your participants.  It captures every discussion thread for future reference and action. Competitive Strategy Action Next Steps 13

For detailed examples and directions, you can:  Watch the Powernoodle Organizer Training Series videos.  Log in and visit the Help section.  Contact us at  Join the user groups online. Powernoodle help and support 14

15 Website: Blog: LinkedIn profile: Sample speech: “Why Strategies Fail,” delivered to the Chief Strategy Officer Summit in New York City, December 2011 (30 minutes, non-commercial) Mark Chussil, Founder, CEO of Advanced Competitive Strategies, Inc.

Powernoodle Template Taking Action on Competitive Strategy by Mark Chussil and Powernoodle Inc is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at and