Page 134

TOYOTA FINANCIAL SERVICES AND THE BIG IDEAS

PREPARE FOR CHANGE

The organizers wanted to get a feel for how people within the company wanted to grow the business over the next five years. They asked employees to submit ideas via an internal web portal, focusing on across the following dimensions: increasing revenues, optimizing resources, and managing costs.

Over 60 new ideas were submitted. But when they plotted them on an Innovation Matrix, the executive team noticed two things.

First of all, every one of the ideas fell on the left-hand side of the Business Model Canvas: internal operations. However, none of the ideas did much to address the right-hand side of the canvas: where value is created for customers and the company.

Secondly, the executive team noticed that the ideas would only bring incremental changes, not substantial ones. No one was convinced that incremental changes would enable TFS to double profits in five years.

FIRE STARTERS TO THE RESCUE

The executive team needed a way to help the participants think bigger, expand beyond their initial ideas, and place more emphasis on value creation. With some outside help, the team prepared four fire starter questions to inspire the participants. These served two purposes. They helped frame the challenge around simple, straightforward questions. And they split the overarching goals (double profits in five years and focus on value creation) into more manageable parts that the participants would ideate on.

Page 135

They visualized the fire starters and stuck them to the walls in the workshop space to give the teams an anchor while ideating.

DRY RUN

Prior to jumping into ideation and trying to figure out what would work for the executive team, the organizers held a pre-workshop session. A small group of key leaders from a few business units spent a day and a half creating Business Model and Value Proposition Canvases depicting the current state of TFS and its customers.

The committee learned during the pre-workshop that there was a lack of agreement about and understanding of the current business model, even within company leadership. In turn, this created a lack of unity within the executive team about the company strategy. The committee also realized that using tools and working visually would make the larger conversation much easier and more substantive.

ACTUAL OFFSITE

Once the dry runs were completed, 55 top executives and managers of Toyota Financial Services came together in Santa Monica, CA, USA, for a 2½-day strategic planning workshop. After their detailed preparation, the organizers had high hopes that the participants would walk away with a better understanding of how to design a brighter future for the company.

Page 136

Toyota Financial Services used the Innovation Matrix to plot how ideas scored against the criteria. The matrix helped them filter out the really promising ideas. See page 146 on how to use it.

Borst opened the offsite and, to set the scene, he gave the rallying cry: “Double profits in 5 years’ time!” since on this first day, the participants mostly would be refining their point of view.

An incredible breakthrough occurred as each team began building their business models. The group realized they lacked consensus on who the primary customers actually were: the car dealers, or the end consumers, or both. Were the dealers their customers or were the end consumers? Borst told the participants, “We can discuss, debate, and disagree – but we need to decide and do.” So the team decided that the key customers TFS serves in their business model were both dealers and end consumers.

They ended day one with consensus on their current business model, something they never had made explicit before.

Page 137

The next day, the participants started ideating new business models, using the fire starters as a starting point.

They were instructed to make sure that the left and right sides of their new business model canvases were connected by the goals of creating, delivering, and capturing value. They made sure each of the building blocks supported the goal and was linked up to the other building blocks.

At the end of the day, each group selected their most promising idea for a new business model, based on the design criteria and their enthusiasm, and presented it onstage. The audience rated each idea as if they were the CEO, allocating funds only to those models that would result in doubling profits.

By the end of the second day, the group had come up with four very concrete models for moving the company forward.

Closing the offsite was just as important as starting it, and the team made sure next steps were laid out.

We visualized the fire starters and stuck them to the walls in the workshop space to give the teams an anchor while ideating.

“This time, we made the ideas concrete before we left and knew how we were going to take them forward. We had no shortage of volunteers who wanted to work on it in some way. I’ve never had that happen before,” said Chris Ballinger, the CFO.

Borst concluded the offsite by endorsing the new tools in a very real way, emphasizing that the offsite was not pie in the sky and that this work had to continue on a regular basis in order for TFS to get to where it needed to go. He went on record saying his job was to enable the executive team and managers to continue their effort begun that week.

Designing for a better future is not something to do on the side; it is your job.

Page 138

INTRODUCTION TO IDEATION TOOLS

While everyone can and should bring their shower ideas to the table, expanding and exploring ideas is much easier done with the right-sized group using the right tools. Here are some ways to ideate together.

STARTING OUT

When you’re starting the ideation process, you’ll need to shift your – and your team’s – mindset away from evaluation. That’s not always easy, especially when you have a job that involves critical thinking, making many decisions, and evaluating other people’s work. But don’t fret. With a bit of practice using the tools and techniques made for ideating, you’ll get it in no time!

TAKE YOUR TIME

It may take you and your team some time – perhaps even 15–20 minutes – to switch into ideation mode. This is where ice breakers make a big difference. Shifting to a more playful, fun mindset will help the mental transition from execution to ideation tremendously. Like everything, the more you practice, the better you’ll get at it.

One caveat: Don’t spend the entire day in ideation mode. Not only will it be counterproductive, you’ll quickly run out of gas and more than likely begin arguing about the ideas rather than expanding upon them.

DON’T BLOCK

Be aware of “blocking” behaviors that break the flow of creativity. Prematurely evaluating and judging ideas will block the creative flow. To overcome this, try using “yes, and . . .” rather than “yes, but . . .” statements. And make sure your team is wearing their yellow thinking hats; they can don their black hats later.

DON’T OVERTHINK

The key to ideating is not overthinking every idea or word on the sticky note in front of you. Let your brain come up with anything it wants, and take the role of recorder rather than trying to direct the flow of your thoughts. This is also something you’ll get better at with practice.

USE A CANVAS

Sometimes it’s hard to get the creative engines started. Sure, people come to work with their favorite shower ideas. But in ideation, you’re looking to build upon and expand beyond the shower ideas. Often, the best way to do this is to use a canvas, like the Business Model Canvas or Value Proposition Canvas, to help frame the ideation session and expand from there. The Business Model Canvas has the added benefit that it also requires people to go a bit deeper.

Page 139

GO INTO SPACE

Sometimes it’s necessary to force yourself and your team to take a trip to space. What if you had to start from scratch? What if you stopped doing what you do today? Asking these questions will help your team expand beyond the boundaries of your current strategy and its limitations. As you leave reality behind, start to build on others ideas to make the big idea even bigger. When you land back on earth, you’ll likely find that you‘ve learned something new that can augment your current strategy – or spark an entirely new one.

WALL OF IDEAS

The wall of ideas is a great way to record the results of your ideation session. When they fasten their sticky notes to the wall, everyone, from the introverts to the extroverts, is working together creatively and feeling a sense of achievement. As the team adds ideas to the wall, they will no doubt come up with new ones or point out ones that are funny or interesting.

COMING BACK TO EARTH

When you have been ideating with your team for a while, the arc of tension will naturally come to an end at some point. Everyone will slow down their idea generation; it will start to feel more like an effort to come up with another idea. Be cognizant of this state as this is the point where the collective energy is starting to dissipate. This is a perfect moment to call for a break. When you come back, you and the team can begin evaluating ideas, which will help to increase the energy level.

THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOR

Once the team has generated tons of ideas – perhaps several hundred (no, really) – and stuck them to the wall of ideas, it’s time to start organizing them. It’s important not to think of this as busywork. Organizing ideas will actually lead to new combinations and more ideas (remember the stepping-stones concept). One of the best ways to do this is to cluster similar ideas together and give them some big title or headline.

After you’ve clustered the ideas to your satisfaction, you’ll want to filter the ones that are most promising to work on. No need to deliberate or agonize over this, either! At the end of this chapter we’ve shared a great tool that will help you do this quickly and in a structured way, since long discussions about which ideas are better on paper simply are a waste of time.