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| How is Decision Scoping used in market research design? |
Decision Scoping is about making decisions to grow market share, and about making best use of a market research study. Whether conducting an online survey, buyer attitude depth interviews, focus group, or photo-ethnography study, this is a first step vital to profits, turn around, or engergizing sales. It is an internal process that employs idea generation for exploring the real alternatives available for building market share. It asks some key questions such as "What do we know now?", "What would we do if we had to make a decision today?", "What are the true options open to us as we see them now?", and "What are the crucial issues which will drive our choice among several decision options?" This process can be conducted using individual management interviews followed by a meeting of decision makers and influencers. We've reprinted below an article from our Strategy Newsletter which explains it more fully. Decision Scope is a decision mapping , fast start, first-step "war room" approach to strategy creation. Key
Sections It also saves time and money. This occurs because Decision Scoping forces management to think, and think thoroughly and creatively, before rushing headlong into major studies; or worse, making costly, short-sighted strategic mistakes. Analytical work and research will likely needed at some point in the strategy process. By starting out with Decision Scoping , however, management increases the probability that subsequent work will have a high payoff. Decision Scoping is a “fast-start” process. The four core steps of the process primarily call for assessing existing information, ideas, and internal drivers. It is a flexible approach adaptable for quickly responding to a new emerging opportunity, issue or threat. Decision Scoping is like a “war room.”The activities and mindset for “Scoping ” a decision are similar to what goes on in a war room. In a war room, decision makers assemble and inventory resources, identify possible targets, and generate options for deploying those resources for maximum payoff. In a business unit, the goal is usually to beat the competition on various battlegrounds. For business decision makers, as in a war room, the choice of how and where to deploy resources starts by generating and identifying the opportunities and refining options. Everyone must be fully alert, using both creative and analytic thinking, insuring that all possible strategic opportunities are uncovered and debated. The A-B-C’s of a Decision. What exactly is a strategic decision? To “decide” means “cut off” all but one course of action. This implies that there is more than one choice, say, choices A, B, or C. This is a robust decision because it includes more than one real choice. In strategy building I suggest that executives need to avoid the "thin decision" where only one option is evaluated (choosing option A, or not choosing A). In the daily life of an enterprise, managers make hundreds of thin decisions routinely. Otherwise, they would never get much else done. When in the arena of major tactical or strategical decisions, however, the robust decision, or A-B-C model yields vastly better decisions.
Thin decisions usually do not yield optimum results because there has been work on only one option. If the “not A” choice is made, we’re back to square one: The decision is to maintain the status quo. The Thin Decision Trap occurs because is the routine and normal way of day-to-day decisions: a manager identifies a problem and generates a solution. Problem: solution. Over and over. It is the operational norm, and it works. The trap is that when we deal with strategy decisions, the thin decision model does not yield superior results because real options are not fully developed and contested, and rarely is creative thinking applied. It’s risky, and a lazy way of decision-making when big stakes strategy is involved. The Decision Pathway. Opportunity generation is the starting point. To create robust decisions I suggest following a pathway where the first step is scanning and identifying opportunities. These might involve market, channels, technology, process innovation or other opportunity areas. The triangle graphic shows the pathway narrowing at each stage. This represents the idea that high-leverage power decisions must first focus on opportunity scanning to generate many possibilities.
Decision Scoping Steps
Below are some typical tools that can be employed. The mix of tools can vary depending on whether time horizons are short or long. Urgent situations require a faster pace. 1. Answer key questions. This is a checklist of starter questions. They address the larger question, “Where are we now?”
Crucial issues are those facts, goals, and assessments which you identify as key to the choice of one option. Build a short list of these crucial issues – facts, constraints, and goals -- that will drive selection of decision options. Crucial issues are important because they will determine you choice of a decision option. Take two competitors, for example: each may construct a strategic decision, say for example market entry, in exactly the same way. Yet, the crucial issues for each player will likely be different because of their market position, capacities and capabilities, goals, and view of the market. 3. Construct a Decision Timeline. The decision timeline plots and anticipates future decisions. Not all important decisions need to be made today: There may be a future timeframe when events will converge. If such points on a timeline can be forecast, decision quality is enriched. By anticipating future decisions, under various scenarios, you give focus to immediate decisions. 4. Identify Strategic Intelligence Gaps. By working through the key questions in the Scoping process, strategic intelligence gaps will surface. During Scoping , the goal is not so much to answer those questions, but rather to identify the gaps between “what we know” and “what we need to know” to move forward in the decision pathway. The three components of the Intelligence Platform are useful here:
Decision Scoping helps managers move forward efficiently to a decision. This process yields better decisions, plain and simple:
An underpinning of Decision Scoping is an open and exploratory mindset by the management team that seeks to “fill the hopper” with promising opportunities, and then generate and refine multiple decision options. The result is “faster and smarter” decision making, well- thought out and robust strategic choices, and, in the end, a stronger and well- differentiated competitive advantage and higher market shares and gross profits. By adopting a Decision Scoping mindset, such words as “opportunities”, “options” and core strategic goals begin to more pepper management discussion. Here is what the mindset looks like:
Decision Scoping is both a mindset and work which provide a fast start for strategy decisions that build market share. The good thing about Decision Scoping is that work can start immediately. It points the way for targeting strategic intelligence and research so that it fits the specific decision making framework rather than a shotgun approach. This saves time and money. The prime benefits, however, are that Decision Scoping accelerates strategic thinking. That thinking is sharper because of the analytic, evaluation, and creative drills management must do: grappling with tough key questions, defining the crucial issues, and distilling existing data, and identifying critical new information. The bottom line results are better decisions and enhanced competitive advantage. Footnote 1 Mintzberg, Henry; Crafting Strategy, Harvard Business Review, 1987 July-August, p.67 | ||||||||||||||||
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