Playing To Win
A Primer on Strategy Choice Chartering
Three Practical Examples
I have been asked many times to explain Strategy Choice Chartering in greater detail. So, I have decided to write a Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece on A Primer on Strategy Choice Chartering: Three Practical Examples. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here.
Strategic Choice Chartering in this Series
It is not as though I haven’t talked about Strategy Choice Chartering in this series. I introduced it with the sixth piece in this series — four years ago. I discussed multiple times how it can help organize strategy from the top of a company to the bottom (here, here and here). I have also described several ways the tool can help a company get things done (here, here and here). And have discussed it in the contexts of various other topics — like planning or the development of executives or as part of being a good boss. Lastly, I provided a tool to help with choice chartering conversations. (If you want to read a couple as background, I suggest the first and the last.)
Because I have talked about it so many times yet there are still many questions, I assume both that readers are really interested in the concept/tool, and there is something they find missing from the previous pieces. From a closer look at the questions, I believe readers want specific examples of how to take your strategic choice and charter choices by your subordinates.
That is what I will do, using examples from my time as Dean of the Rotman School because I know exactly what I did. Plus, it is so old (prior to the end of my term in 2013) that here is no confidentiality to be concerned with.
My Strategy at Rotman
The context for my strategy choice chartering was my overall strategy for the Rotman School — which was my responsibility as dean. The aspiration was to elevate what was then the fourth-ranked business school in southern Ontario to undisputed leader in Canada and Canada’s only globally consequential business school. Where-to-Play was in a set of global programs — Commerce undergraduate, full-time MBA, and PhD — and select catchment area programs (i.e. programs that only draw students from the local Greater Toronto Area — or GTA) — part-time MBA, Executive MBA (EMBA), and non-degree executive education. How-to-Win was by gaining the reputation for having the most unique and innovative programs — both in content and program structure — and making unique intellectual contributions both to local businesses in the GTA and to the broader business world (e.g. through integrative thinking and design in business).
I needed to charter the next level of choices, including to the Director of the EMBA program, my Chief Administrative Officer, the editor/publisher of Rotman Magazine and numerous others. I will use the first three to illustrate the mechanics of Strategy Choice Structuring.
The EMBA Program
I hired Beatrix Dart to be our new EMBA Director. Our program was a distant third best in the GTA. Ivey was considered the leading program and Schulich, which had leveraged a joint venture to put the prestigious Kellogg name on its degree, was second.
Explain My Choice
As part of our strategy, all our programs are going to be #1 in the GTA. No program is worth keeping if it doesn’t contribute to being the Canada’s only globally relevant business school. Some of the best business schools in the world — like Harvard and Stanford — don’t have an EMBA, so we don’t have to have one.
Identify the Necessary Features of Her Choice
Our program is third because it is completely drab, lacking any distinction. Ours needs to become the best. Schulich outsourced its cachet to Kellogg. I don’t like that approach, but it is not out of bounds if something similar can elevate us to #1. Any content or structural changes are within bounds. Make sure whatever we do is based on a better, deeper understanding of what students care about and how they make their choice of EMBA program.
Assist in Making the Choice
You have the time and resources necessary to transform the program. I will support you in any way you need. Come to me with ideas you want to test. Use me in any way that is helpful to publicize or sell your redesigned program.
The Results
I didn’t need to revisit my choice because she oversaw a total restructuring of the program that made it #1 in the GTA and a core strength of Rotman. She asked me for advice and for assistance in headlining promotional events — but she was the architect of the transformation. She converted a standard two-year format to a compressed thirteen-month program — based on insights from her deep student understanding. Due to their age demographic, most EMBA students are married with young children while tackling challenging mid-career jobs. Taking an EMBA on top of that full load is just plain painful, and they told us in our research that they would prefer the more intense pain of compressed program than the longer pain of a standard program. That was a key selling point of the new program — though there were other innovations as well.
The Financial Framework
I inherited a fine University of Toronto (UofT) veteran in Mary-Ellen Yeomans, who was my Chief Administrative Officer — which is a typical position in the university world that largely combines the CFO and COO positions in a private company. Her responsibility for running the financial system at Rotman meant interfacing intensively with the highly structured and rigid UofT financial system.
Explain My Choice
We don’t have the economics to fund world class faculty and student services that are essential to becoming Canada’s only globally consequential business school. While I think our 5–4–4–2 plan (quintuple the endowment, quadruple earnings from executive education, quadruple MBA tuition, and double the enrollment in the MBA program) is realistic, in the UofT financial system, the dramatically increased revenue would flow to UofT, not to the Rotman School. Then the provost would annually allocate a revenue number to Rotman. It would be impossible to have transformational economics based on year-by-year arbitrary allocations.
Identify the Necessary Features of Her Choice
We need a financial framework that gives us long-term certainty on how revenues that we generate flow to us, and we need to be allowed to keep a reasonable amount of the new revenue we bring into UofT. But it has got to be palatable to the university — otherwise they just won’t change a thing. It must be a win for them to get it through the UofT governance process. Other than that caveat — anything goes.
Assist in Making the Choice
You know the UofT system so much better than I ever will. I know lots of other approaches to financial management systems. I will have infinite patience in going back and forth to model alternative approaches. Additionally, I am ready to put all my credibility on the line for a revised system. I will do everything that I can to sell this to the president who recruited me and the provost who chaired the search committee that hired me.
The Results
We established a unique system that UofT called ‘resource center management.’ It gave us a multi-year certainty of the split between Rotman and UofT of the revenues generated by Rotman . As part of the arrangement, we gave up all downside protection from UofT by which if a faculty ran into financial trouble, UofT would bail it out. The new framework enabled us, under the 5–4–4–2 plan, to grow revenue from $13M to $130M over my time as dean. UofT cashed in as its share of our revenues grew from $4M to about $40M. Even though the UofT made off like a bandit, the remaining funds enabled us to fulfil our strategy. And it was so successful that when the next UofT president was appointed, he adopted the system for the whole university.
Rotman Magazine
Karen Christensen was hired from industry as editor and publisher of our alumni magazine, then called Rotman Management.
Explain My Choice
Part of how we will win is by getting our unique intellectual property out into the world in a practical, user-friendly form. One of the ways will be to take our drab alumni magazine, which we believe few alumni actually read, let alone anybody else, and make it a key pillar of our intellectual contribution to the business world.
Identify the Necessary Features of Her Choice
We need to make our magazine a legitimate competitor to the three consequential business school publications — Harvard Business Review (HBR), Sloan Management Review (SMR) and California Management Review (CMR). HBR is the 800-lb guerilla, so it’s not realistic to catch it. But SMR and CMR are catchable. Anything is on the table. It doesn’t need to remain alumni focused. We want to get to the point where we are subscription and advertising funded — from zero of each now — and get carried by newsstands in Canada. It must be largely self-funding, but I will roll all incremental revenues back into the magazine’s budget.
Assist in Making the Choice
I will help you in any way I can. You will report directly to me, not through the alumni or fundraising person as would normally be the case. I will write for you (I wrote a feature in every issue during my 15 years as dean) and use my connections to find great people to write for the magazine.
The Results
Karen did a stunning job. She took on the task and ran with her ideas. She attracted authors from all walks — including Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter — and edited them for interest and readability. She developed the idea of themed issues (before HBR did) — such as design, transformation, innovation, imagination. Rotman Magazine approached CMR in paid subscribers (at a robust $99/year price point) and was sold on Canadian newsstands. HBR sells its own reprints on its site, but it has historically invited SMR and CMR to do so as well. Given the prominence Karen brought to our magazine, HBR honored Rotman by inviting us to sell our reprints on the site as well — and we did with excellent sales.
Practitioner Insights
For strategy to convert into action, great strategy choices must be made all the way down the organization. That only happens consistently when there is a robust practice of Strategy Choice Chartering throughout the organization. One important thing to note is that you can start this behavior from any level in the organization — not just the top. Regardless of what executives above you are doing, you have the power to make your part of the organization — however big or small — perform better with robust Strategy Choice Chartering.
While it is not terribly difficult, it takes real commitment.
First, as the choice charterer, you need to make only the choices you are most capable of making. If you make more, you will bottleneck choice making in the organization rather than develop organizational choice-making capacity.
Then second, you need to explain your choices to those to whom you are chartering the next level of choices. If you don’t thoroughly explain your choice, they won’t have the context they need.
Then third, and perhaps most importantly, you need to identify the key features of the choice to them. They must know the form their choice must take in order to seek and create it.
And fourth, they need to know that you will help them with their choice if they need it. You need to make time on your schedule for those conversations. Knowing that their boss is standing by to help is what makes a manager feel most motivated. If you blow them off because you feel you don’t have time, you will grind the strategy choice process to a halt.
Finally, fifth always signal that you are willing to revisit your choice if they can’t find one that is consistent with and reinforcing of yours. If they can’t, it means yours wasn’t a practical choice and you need to do better.
If you do those first five steps, the sixth — the process being repeated at the next level — will largely take care of itself.
