Something Different

Strategy Workshops

Sometimes you just need to get the right people in a room and sort the bloody thing out.

Not every problem needs a six-month strategy project. Sometimes you know something needs to change, but the problem isn't quite clear. Competing views are around the table. Too many priorities. Decisions keep getting deferred. Or plenty is happening without enough agreement on where it's all heading.

A well-designed workshop can change that. Something Different works with leadership teams to get to the root of complex business, brand, customer and marketing problems, create clarity around what matters, and make the decisions needed to move forward. Not workshops for the sake of workshops. Workshops designed to change what happens next.

Talk about a workshop

Start with the problem, not the workshop

We start with what you're trying to solve

There isn't a standard Something Different workshop that gets rolled out regardless of the brief. We start with what you're trying to solve. That might be:

Business direction

Where are we going, what's getting in the way, and where should we focus?

Growth

What's really constraining performance and what needs to change?

Brand

What should we stand for, who should we matter to and why should people choose us?

Customer

Where are we creating value, friction or disappointing experiences?

Marketing

What are we actually trying to change and where should we invest?

Alignment

How do we get different teams making decisions around the same direction?

Once the problem is clearer, I'll design the workshop around it.

A practical toolkit for better conversations

The framework serves the problem, not the other way around

Behind the workshops sits the Something Different Manual: a growing collection of models, principles, diagnostic questions and practical tools developed through more than 20 years of working across strategy, brand, marketing and customer problems.

Depending on what we're trying to solve, we might use the Better Business Operating Model to diagnose where performance is being constrained. We might explore Customer, Category, Culture and Company to understand a brand or market problem. Or we might go deeper into Purpose, Value, Memory, Preference, Access, Experience and Consistency to understand where the organisation needs to become stronger.

And I'm not a neutral facilitator. I'll make sure the right conversations happen, but I'll also bring an independent perspective, challenge assumptions, introduce useful evidence and ask the difficult questions when they need asking.

There will probably be Post-it Notes. But Post-it Notes aren't the output.

How it works

From complexity towards clarity and choices

  1. Get to the Root. Before anyone walks into the room, we clarify the problem we're trying to solve: conversations with key people, reviewing existing research and strategy, looking at customer or performance information, or some initial diagnostic work.
  2. Design the Session. The workshop is built around the questions that need answering and the decisions that need making, drawing on the most useful tools and frameworks for the problem.
  3. Work Through It Together. Get the right people in the room, introduce outside perspective, challenge assumptions and work systematically from complexity towards clarity and choices.
  4. Turn Discussion Into Decisions. The important thinking is captured and synthesised into something useful: clear choices, agreed priorities, actions and, where appropriate, a framework or plan for what happens next.

What you leave with matters

You should leave with greater clarity than you arrived with

A good workshop shouldn't end with photographs of walls covered in Post-it Notes. Depending on the problem, that could mean:

And sometimes the workshop reveals that more work is required. That's useful too. Because knowing what problem you actually need to solve is considerably better than spending six months solving the wrong one.

Have something you need to sort out?

You don't need a perfectly formed brief. Figuring out what the brief should be is often part of the job. Tell me what's going on, where you're getting stuck and what you're trying to achieve.

Talk to Gareth about a workshop