After the 12 strategies were presented, the judges—the invited attendees—were each given five Post-it Notes and told to put one next to their favorites. They could put all five on a single strategy if they found it that compelling. The transparency and immediacy of this approach freed it from the politics that sometimes seem endemic to the strategic-planning process. Managers had to rely on the originality and clarity of their curves and their pitches. One began, for instance, with the line “We’ve got a strategy so cunning that you won’t be our customers, you’ll be our fans.”
After the notes were posted, the judges were asked to explain their picks, adding another level of feedback to the strategy-making process. Judges were also asked to explain why they did not vote for value curves.
As the teams synthesized the judges’ common likes and dislikes, they realized that fully one-third of what they had thought were key competitive factors were, in fact, marginal to customers. Another third either were not well articulated or had been overlooked in the visual-awakening phase. It was clear that they needed to reassess some long-held assumptions, such as EFS’s separation of its on-line and traditional businesses. They also learned that buyers from all markets had a basic set of needs and expected similar services. If you met those particular needs, customers would happily forgo everything else. Regional differences became significant only when there was a problem with the basics. This was news to many people who had claimed that their regions were unique.
Following the strategy fair, the teams were finally able to complete their mission. They could draw a value curve that was a truer likeness of the existing strategic profile than anything they had produced earlier, partly because the new picture ignored the specious distinction that EFS had made between its on-line and off-line businesses. More important, they were now in a position to draw a new curve that would both be distinctive and speak to a true but hidden need in the marketplace. See the exhibit “EFS: Before and After.”