Strategy is too often focused on technology, where the fascination with shiny objects often undermines the objectives of the organization. With mobility, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and the brand requires an understanding of the delicate balance between the art of possible and the art of pragmatism. Adopting lean principles for strategy ensures that complexity, rigidity, and friction are replaced with simplicity, adaptability, and speed. Accelerating market demands can only be combated through accelerated road-mapping developed through actionable insights and informed planning.

1. Adopt a Lean Approach to
Mobile Strategy

2. As mobile has become the primary interface via which
human beings experience an increasingly digitally
optimized world, brands are being forced to adapt at an
accelerated rate of change to create and maintain
competitive advantage.

3. Increasing pressures from the executive suite force
tactical decisions. Siloed efforts in mobile across rogue
business units create unmanageable assets and
unnecessary support issues. User demands accelerate by
the day, forcing organizations to adopt reactionary
tactics counter to corporate directives.

4. All of this mobility disruption to pre-existing models has
created significant digital friction. Existing models for
defining strategy are highly complex, time consuming,
and based on methodologies designed for addressing an
audience of stationary targets. The mobile experience is
often initiated by moving targets and is defined not only
by the message and the medium but also by the context
of the user experience.

5. As a result, the complexity and associated analysis
paralysis involved with developing strategies lead to
organizational confusion and indecision. In this age of
mobility, brands are faced with the dilemma of how best
to manage ever-increasing complexities and prioritize
efforts that add measurable value to the user and
provide immediate impact for the business.

6. The question is, more often than not, a fundamental one:
Where do we start?

7. Lean Strategy: An Alternative to Existing Strategic
Thinking

8. Successful strategies for mobility require a significant
overhaul in approach. Success relies on quickly
identifying and prioritizing mobility investments to
create alignment and foster continuous innovation.

9. Brands need to gain clarity for mobile efforts. They need
to stop thinking about large projects or big releases and
embrace a decision-making framework executed in a
series of short, informed, prioritized, and iterative cycles.

10. A focus on deconstructing complexities is required to
improve manageability, increase flexibility, and accelerate
informed decisions measured by value to the user, value
to the business, and ability to execute.

11. Systematically and intelligently prioritizing all of the
initiatives proposed within and across lines of business
poses considerable challenges. To simplify the
prioritization process, focus needs to be on the
identification and rapid formulation of informed project
activation plans designed to quickly address mobility
efforts.

12. When evaluated through the lenses of value to the user
audience, value in alignment with business objectives,
and organizational ability to execute, ideas transform
into opportunities that take shape as highly valuable,
immediately executable initiatives prioritized and poised
for activation.

13. Agile Strategy Drives Actionable Insights and Informed
Planning

14. When executed effectively, this lean framework
approach to strategy should focus on three distinct yet
interrelated steps designed to provide an informed road
map to achieve more immediate success: investigation,
formulation, and activation.

15. Investigation begins with an understanding of current
trends in the marketplace as well as the competitive
landscape facing the organization. This analysis should
be evaluated against an audit of the brand’s existing in-
market mobile experiences. An understanding of user
personas and their engagement journey, coupled with
key stakeholders interviews within the organization,
begins to form the key prioritization criteria of the value
of a prospective effort to the user as well as its
alignment with the objectives of the business.

16. Formulation involves exploration into existing current
and future mobility efforts and harnessing market trends,
mobile experiences audit, and competitive analysis to
identify unconsidered opportunities. In addition, a high-
level assessment of the organization’s level of mobile
maturity from the perspectives of people, process, and
technology forms the basis for an understanding of the
organization’s ability to execute.

17. Activation combines all initiatives that have passed the
litmus test of alignment with business strategy to be
defined as opportunities. These opportunities should
then be evaluated through the lenses of value to the user
audience, value to the business, and organizational
ability to execute to be assigned a prioritized ranking.

18. The prioritized opportunities deemed highest value form
the basis for the lean activation plan, with the business
case developed for the top initiatives, including cost and
required resource models, technological dependencies,
prospective ROI, and multi-phase road map for ongoing
solution innovation.

19. Addressing the Need for Revised Strategic Models

20. Strategy is too often focused on technology, where the
fascination with shiny objects often undermines the
objectives of the organization. With mobility, simplicity is
the ultimate sophistication, and the brand requires an
understanding of the delicate balance between the art of
possible and the art of pragmatism.

21. Adopting lean principles for strategy ensures that
complexity, rigidity, and friction are replaced with
simplicity, adaptability, and speed. Accelerating market
demands can only be combated through accelerated
road-mapping developed through actionable insights
and informed planning.

22. Assuming the lead in driving innovation is the challenge
ahead. Is your organization prepared for leadership?

23. Scott Forshay
scott.forshay@gmail.com
Twitter @scottforshay