Given significant changes in the retail industry and distress amongst market players, we had the opportunity to create this new, long term strategy. This would define Target’s role in the market to defend our current position in stores and achieve a greater market share position in digital.
To maximize time and effort, I delivered this project through a series of cross-functional team sessions for prioritization and decision making.
Our tactical goals were to create, articulate, share, and help implement a long term strategy that had merit for our guests, was defensible in the market, and could fit with Target. This included where to play (i.e., consumer segments, channels, demographics, vertical stages of production pitted against a competitive diagnotic) and how to win (i.e., with brands, with consumers, in experience).
It was crucially important for teams and leaders to decide on subset of pillars to stand for. After all, we can't stand for and deliver everything. This was no easy feat.
During the diagnostic phase of the strategy work, we identified 7 levers for future growth. Each lever represented a strategic choice. The sharper Target can make “strong” versus “light” choices, the clearer its strategy will be to guests and brands.
These positions become the foundation for an ecosystem I introduced to represent how Target could play in the market. With our deep industry expertise and eye on Target's mission and purpose, I created 3 ecosystems that illustratively represented multiple postures to help facilitate progress leaders and stakeholders.
As principal, I led a team of designers, analyst and consultants in creating a long term strategy for a division of Target.
My reponsibilities included:
Providing bold vision, sound strategic judgment, day-to-day team leadership and development, structure, and project management through often ambiguous bodies of work
Navigating, influencing, and managing internal / external partners; developing and leading stakeholder relationships
Operationalizing frameworks across key working groups
"To build on our momentum, stay at the forefront of guest trends, and further differentiate ourselves from our competition, we crafted a strategic direction that is uniquely Target."
Using those ecosystems, we workshopped with leaders and partners to influence strategic choices made for the strategy.
The result of the strategic choice making ecosystem framework I created was three fold:
1. It gave us a starting spot and brought understanding on how taking a strong position with one lever could impact the position of another.
2. It drove clarity in choosing a position in 1 or 2 of the levers, it would also mean taking a light posture in another (i.e., we aligned on what to deprioritize).
3. Our partners and leaders knew the posture we were taking in relation to other key competitors in the market, ultimately defining our defensible future.
As a results of the decisions made, the stance of the ecosystem ported directly to our strategic intent. And the concepts that supported each lever helped defined our overall offering. This approach has been adopted by numerous strategy teams since in hopes of leading to the same, successful outcome.