Predicting Competitors’ Actions

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.  Flexible and customisable for in-person or online collaboration.  Anonymous input creates a rich, inclusive, honest discussion.  Commitment to decision is high. This document will help you design a Powernoodle for predicting competitors’ actions. 3

What is Predicting Competitors’ Actions? Companies are constantly responding to changes in their environment, including actions by competitors. When you take strategic action you should expect that your competitor will react. When your competitors take action, you need to counter that action to maintain your advantage. Predicting how your competitors will act is an important part of planning your strategy. 4

The Powernoodle Approach – Simple Yet Powerful ► Nominate things a competitor could do. ► Combine the actions into categories. ► Assess the actions on the three criteria: 1. How capable is the competitor of taking this action? 2. How well will this action give the competitor what it wants? 3. How well does this action fit with the competitor’s current/evolving culture? 5

Your first step is to list your competitors. For each competitor on your list, your group will answer the question: “What are all the things this competitor might do that would have an impact on us?” 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 Organizer:  Creates the Powernoodle Session.  Creates a Question in the session for each competitor. “What are all the things [this competitor] might do that would have an impact on us?”  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. For this Powernoodle, your group should work through the same question for each competitor. List of invited Participants.

Brainstorm: Consider the Question for each competitor 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. This competitor is capable of taking this action. This action would give the competitor what they want. This action is a good fit with their current/evolving culture. Prioritise: Determine which actions to prepare for using the following standard: “Knowing what I know today, this is how I would allocate our resources to prepare for this action. Predicting a Competitors’ Actions Process 11

Intuitive System for Capturing Ratings. 12 Intuitive slider rating tool is customised by Organizer. Ratings can be as complex as needed.

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. Predicting Competitors’ Actions Next Steps 13

The Powernoodle Report provides Complete Documentation and Basis for Project Management. 14 Each tab captures all content from each step. Spreadsheet available for immediate download for all participants. Details can be added in the Powernoodle session or in the spreadsheet. Saves time and maintains buy- in to decisions.

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 15

16 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 Predicting Competitors’ Actions by Mark Chussil and Powernoodle Inc is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at and