The Smart Growth Imperative
RECONVERGE:G2 2019
April 22-25, 2019
Fluno Center, UW Madison Campus
Our Promise: Applied Learning with a Purpose: Developing Your Organizational Intelligence Growth Plan
If you’ve been to a G2 meeting, you know that our event is much more than what’s “on the agenda”, but we know that explicit skill-building is an important way you will make the commitment to join us. But more than simply skill-building, this year’s RECONVERGE:G2 experience will feature a hands-on, structured approach for you to define and refine your organizational intelligence growth plan. In other words, you’ll get back to the office with a robust, battle-tested plan you can implement immediately.
The way we will get there is through:
- a robust, proven growth framework – the Angles of Attack Algorithm™ (the secret formula to understanding all corporate growth);
- a tested, applied skill-building approach – Analytical Fitness™ using time-tested strategic methods such as Product Lifecycle Analysis, Trend Mapping and Influence mapping – among many others; and,
- a logical approach to developing your organizational growth plan over four days: Inquiry, Insight, Intuition and Influence
Come prepared to apply what you’ve learned!
Your Opportunity as an Intelligence Team Leader
If you come with your team, you’ll have the time and structure to do a “deep dive” with a cross-functional team of key stakeholders in your organization – both in person and online. Your broader team will not only participate actively in the planning process, they also will leave with a better understanding of, and respect for, your unique set of skills. Finally, this approach will allow you to focus the plan-building process within your market space … while not ignoring outside, and potentially disruptive, factors and trends.
Your team can’t make it? Or are you an independent practitioner? We need your expertise! You will work to lead a team of local startup leaders, marketing executives, and university students through each of the exercises – applying the topics and lessons to real-world situations over the course of three days. Not only will you improve your own knowledge, but you will help give back to the business and non-profit community.
Growth Leaders: P&L Managers, General Managers, and Product Managers
When you are accountable to business results, you do not have the time to listen to “interesting” facts – even about hot technology trends. Any insights need to generate real value – for your business unit specifically – in the near term. RECONVERGE:G2 will train you on the latest insight gathering techniques that you can put to work immediately in your organization. This isn’t a “sit and listen” conference. Come prepared to dig in.
You’ll also learn how “intelligence” isn’t a “thing people have”, but rather a skill you can develop and leverage from your team!
Intelligence & Research Professionals
In an era where so much depends on securing the right intelligence to help make the right decision at the right time, many intelligence professionals are frustrated that their findings fall on deaf ears. RECONVERGE:G2 will help you discover why that happens. You will dive into the mix, participating in simulation exercises with your intelligence consumers to learn what drives their decision making process and how to connect what you can produce with their needs.
Technology Entrepreneurs
At RECONVERGE:G2, you won’t just learn about technology, you will actively plan for multiple possible futures. Armed with that insight, you can quickly pivot to outflank competition in the market and achieve geometric growth. What’s more, you will have the opportunity to demonstrate your technology solutions to a group of business and growth leader attendees. For that privilege, we’re asking that you provide your technical expertise as “coaches” during the immersive learning exercises at the heart of the G2 experience.
Top Three Takeaways
- Build – and test! – your growth plan over the course of four immersive skill-building days with your core team (both in person and online).
- Actively participate in the intelligence gathering process and generate immediately actionable insights to drive topline and bottom line performance for YOUR business unit.
- Learn directly from topflight colleagues and technical experts in multiple disciplines in an immersive, intimate setting.
Top Three Takeaways
- Learn what you customers (internal or external) really want in your work product.
- Build your toolbox of interactive intelligence exercises.
- Connect with peers in your field to share experiences and tactics that work.
Top Three Takeaways
- Learn low-cost and no-cost methods to gather intelligence about your offering or customers.
- Apply proven intelligence methods in real time, on real problems, with your real growth term colleagues.
- Network with other entrepreneurs and business leaders.
What can you expect at RECONVERGE:G2?
We’re committed to delivering an experience you will get nowhere else. From applied skill-building, to top-flight networking, to immersive fun (with a purpose!) experience, we promise you’ll make friends for the rest of your life. Yes, that’s a tall order. RECONVERGE:G2 delivers.
Confirmed Facilitators
We will announce additional facilitators soon. We encourage all attendees to connect in advance of RECONVERGE:G2 and begin taking advantage of the opportunity to build relationships.
RECONVERGE:G2 2019 Agenda Details
Remember, this isn’t a lecture conference. Expect to arrive for each session ready to get to work. We’ll make time for you to catch up on emails and phone calls, but during the exercises, you’ll need to bring your A game. Are you ready?
Before You Arrive
Pre-Conference Preparation
To make the most out of the RECONVERGE:G2 conference, each team will need to craft their problem statement – a simple framing of the growth opportunity in front of you and your organization. We have a number of short videos and exercises that will help you complete that assignment in a secure, private, cloud environment. Watch your email for login details.
Note: If you are not attending with a team, don’t worry! You have options:
We can add you to an existing team of your interest (and their approval); or,
You can join a “startup” team (a local area startup working to bring their idea to market); or,
You can go through the exercises during the conference on your own.
Ideally, we believe you’ll get the most out of RECONVERGE:G2 as part of a growth-problem-focused team. We will be in touch with each attendee ahead of the conference to ensure you are set up for the best possible experience.
Monday, April 22, 2019
1pm to 9pm
Day 1/Inquiry – Asking better questions and gathering better data.
The process of inquiry is all about asking the right questions in the right sequence. Instead of focusing on “how” your organization plans to achieve its growth objectives, we need to start with more fundamental questions: What is the right growth strategy for us? Who are we (what strengths and weaknesses do we we have) as we pursue those strategies? Why is this growth strategy critical to our success?
We will work together to articulate those questions – and answers – before we move on. By starting on the bigger questions, we know the right tactics are aligned to the right strategy.
Session 1: The Transformation Process
In this session, you will learn and apply:
- Identifying when the old “winning aspiration” no longer works (themes to share: frogs in the kettle, you get told you have cancer, you face the precipice, etc.)
- Applying practices for recognizing that a major (growth) transformation needs to occur
- Ways of knowing our assumptions about ourselves, our market, our competitors, our customers are valid? (aka, experiencing identity discrepancy, demonstrating humility, achieving learnability, etc.)
- Learning / gaining leadership consensus when your values and cultures start causing you to underperform / miss your strategic goals
Session 2: Control Factors
In this session, you will learn and apply:
- Recognizing the limits of our abilities to decide, plan, and strategize
- Understanding and validating the “truth” about ourselves, and how far our current understanding and efforts are away from it
- Knowing and applying at least two methods (tradecraft) they can use to dynamically identify how much we know, how much and what we don’t know
- Approaches to prevent them from being paralyzed by analysis, overwhelmed by the data, or confront a toxic or unethical leader, etc.
Outcomes for Day 1
You’ll finish the day:
- Asking the right questions in the right way
- Knowing what the right data and information to help you answer them
- With a valid understanding of who you are, the growth opportunity in front of you, and why it is essential to capitalize on it
Evening Activity
Working through fear with Jeff and Amy Meyer.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Day 2/Insight – Transforming analysis into action today.
Our first full day focuses on acting in the present – not simply gathering and analyzing information, but also driving critical decisions in the organization. We will show you how to combine multiple analysis threads to answer the critical questions you identified on Monday.
Session 1: Market Sizing
To know “where we will play”, you must first understand the markets. This exercise will lead us through several types of market sizing exercises…and why you might be asking the wrong questions.
Session 2: Applying Trend Analysis
There is never a lack of insights or trends; what makes one ‘top trends’ report better than another? What can often be lacking is how to make those actionable – to prioritize trends and drivers in a way that creates the most benefit for your leaders.
Session 3: Assessing Competitors’ Vulnerabilities
We will discuss several techniques in technical intelligence to find weaknesses and vulnerabilities in your competition.
Outcomes for Day 2
You’ll finish the day with:
- Not only an understanding macro and micro trends, but also to connect those trends to your organization’s growth plan in a meaningful and actionable way.
- A practical method to estimate the size of the market (or markets) to help you decide where to focus your attention.
- A clear view of the competitive landscape in that market.
Evening Activity
We’ll build on a day of “tradecraft” with a fun (and instructional) HUMINT elicitation activity.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Day 3/Intuition – Dominating your future.
Our third day will help you understand the most critical aspect of strategy development: Choice Making. We’ll accomplish that by understanding the Resources, Processes, and Values that your organization has at its disposal – how they may assist you, how they may hinder you, and what you can do about it.
Session 1: Resources
Resources are the most visible of the factors that contribute to what an organization can and cannot do. Resources include people, equipment, technology, product designs, brands, information, cash, and relationships with suppliers, distributors, and customers. Resources are usually things, or assets — they can be hired and fired, bought and sold, depreciated or enhanced.
– C. Christensen, 2001
Session 2: Processes
Organizations create value as employees transform inputs of resources into products and services of greater worth. The patterns of interaction, coordination, communication, and decision making through which they accomplish these transformations are processes. Processes include not just manufacturing processes, but those by which product development, procurement, market research, budgeting, employee development and compensation, and resource allocation are accomplished.
– C. Christensen, 2001
Session 3: Values
The third class of factors that affects what an organization can or cannot accomplish is its values. The term values carries an ethical connotation, such as those that guide decisions to ensure patient well-being at Johnson & Johnson or that guide decisions about plant safety at Alcoa. But in this framework, values have a broader meaning. An organization’s values are the criteria by which employees make decisions about priorities — by which they judge whether an order is attractive or unattractive, whether a customer is more important or less important, whether an idea for a new product is attractive or marginal, and so on. Employees at every level make decisions about priorities. At the executive tiers, they often take the form of decisions to invest or not invest in new products, services, and processes. Among salespeople, they consist of day — to — day decisions about which customers to call on and which to ignore, which products to push and which to deemphasize.
– C. Christensen, 2001
Session 4: Choice Making
Once we’ve grounded ourselves with the RPV framework, we’ll explore choice making with the help of contradiction analysis – an easy way to address (and overcome) conflicts and finalize our strategies.
Outcomes for Day 3
You’ll finish the day with:
- An understanding of the Resources, Processes, and Values that will impact your organization’s ability to accomplish your strategy.
- A practical method to overcome limitations you discover using contradiction analysis.
- A clear strategic direction to begin the “storytelling” and “influence” process.
Evening Activity
Getting ready for Day 4 – Storytelling Essentials. We’ll use the evening to hone our “pitch-making” skills using a combination of Guy Kawasaki and Disney’s “Frozen” – you’ll have fun learning the key elements of storytelling for your strategy once you return to your organization.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Day 4/Influence – Driving change in your organization.
The best laid plans are just that – plans – unless you are able to use them to catalyze change inside your organization. But just because you have the facts and analysis on your side doesn’t mean people will listen. Our final day dives into actionable influence-building strategies and tactics.
Session 1: Stakeholder Mapping
It’s not enough to simply identify stakeholders both inside and outside your organization. To give your plan the best chance of success, you must also evaluate their potential to help (or not help) your cause. We will use the opinion/influence grid to help us identify stakeholders in a strategic way that leads to prescriptive actions.
Session 2: Inside the Intelligence Studio
During this interactive panel presentation, we will hear from intelligence experts who have succeeded in “influence without authority.” In the “intelligence” field, practitioners are rarely in the position to make the final decision on any proposed course of action. They must use their persuasive skills to convince a marketing director, CEO, or operations leader. The strength of the analysis is, obviously, an important way to do that. However, there’s more to “influence” than just the facts and logical arguments.
Session 3: Readiness Assessment
This is an important bridge to “bring it all together” into a step-by-step, proven approach to change management. We will walk through the critical elements of the planning process, each aligned to the growth curve strategy – the prescribed actions are different and nuanced for each one. Because every team’s challenge is different, this exercise forms the takeaway homework.
Outcomes for Day 4
You’ll finish the day with:
- An actionable stakeholder map for your organization as it relates to your growth plan.
- Proven psychological influence strategies to help you properly “brand” your efforts and your team.
- A clear set of next steps when you return to the office.
Adjourn
We’ll wrap up the “official” conference at 12:00pm CST.
Lunch with the CI Fellows (optional)
Topic: Ownership and influence, social learning community
*This is an optional lunch. Details TBA based on availability and number of attendees.
Don’t Wait! Register for RECONVERGE:G2 today!
*Not sure if you can make it in person, but still want to attend? Choose the “Streaming Online” option. If you decide to arrive in person, we will credit your admission to the in-person fee – or transfer it to a colleague. Your choice.
Our Venue at the Heart of the Innovation Economy:
Fluno Center
At the intersection of superior service and exceptional events you’ll find the Fluno Center. Located on the UW-Madison campus and in the heart of the bustling downtown and cultural center of Madison, WI, the Fluno Center is a full-service event destination and conference center with well-appointed guest rooms. With our variety of meeting rooms, event spaces, and guest rooms, we offer a total-immersion learning environment for individuals, professional groups, and corporate teams.
Learn more about the Fluno Center and the nationally-ranked UW-Madison.
Agenda specifics and speakers are subject to change.