To everyone’s astonishment, the factor customers valued most was getting speedy confirmation of transactions, which only one manager had previously suggested was important. EFS’s managers saw that their customers’ accounting-department personnel spent a lot of time making phone calls to confirm that payments had been made and to check when they would be received. Numerous calls were also received on the same subject, and the time wasted in handling them was compounded by the necessity of making further calls to the foreign exchange provider, namely EFS or a competitor.
EFS’s teams were then sent back to the drawing board. This time, though, they had to propose a new strategy. Each team had to draw six new and different value curves, each one depicting a strategy that would make the company stand out in its market. By demanding six pictures from each team, we hoped to push managers to create innovative proposals. For each visual strategy, the teams also had to write a compelling tag line that captured the essence of the strategy and spoke directly to buyers. Suggestions included “Leave It to Us,” “Make Me Smarter,” and “Transactions in Trust.”
Visual Strategy Fair.
After two weeks of drawing and redrawing, the teams presented their strategy canvases at what we call a “visual strategy fair.” Attendees included senior corporate executives but consisted mainly of representatives of EFS’s external constituencies, the kinds of people the managers had met with during their field trips. In just two hours, the teams presented all 12 curves, figuring that any idea that takes more than ten minutes to communicate is probably too complicated to be any good. The pictures were hung on the walls so that the audience could easily see them.