Project Yeti

The First 90 Days

Backdrop

Many thanks for the opportunity to put forward our approach and this initial discussion document. As promised, it’s early thoughts to put some structure and flesh on the knowledge shared so far. 

As we’ve explained, this challenge is often at the heart of our recent programs. That critical moment when fresh leadership aims to get a practical and inclusive grasp of the situation, quickly understand what works, what needs to change and asses what will not fit a future vision that works. 

Taking An Early Position

You intend to work fast but intelligently and achieve an inspirational, collaborative, determined roadmap to achieve big goals.

We discussed empathy's importance in bringing people along the journey and winning their hearts and minds at every step. 

From experience and being pragmatic, this requires a delicate approach to inevitable disruption (for some). It should happen carefully and surgically while not losing existing customers and revenue.

Initially, we discussed how a stepwise and collective approach to developing a clear charter and vision is vital for aligning the vision and strategy among a diverse team and (importantly) addressing the right problems.

Some Critical Considerations Drive This Program

The overall strategic goal is to modernize the business* into a tech-enabled service provider by carefully ‘threading’ new technologies into operations over multiple years.

*The business is a consolidation of 3 travel agencies—growing through 46 acquisitions over the last ten years. The company serves the mid-tier/SME space for travel management. (AKA The category TMC). Around 4500 existing customers with a 98% retention rate. Revenue streams include 65% from suppliers and 35% from other sources like GDS. There’s a focus on tight EBIT margins through financial discipline but a lack of unified leadership. It operates more like a series of individual companies/silos rather than a cohesive organization. Each acquisition is largely left to operate independently within regions. 

• Improve operations and scale the existing business while leveraging new technologies.

• Within 90 days (June), arrive at a solid game plan that is ready to be tested and executed in the second half of the year.

• Understand the requirements to achieve practical results and progress within the timeline.

• Balancing institutional knowledge with innovation and change while making people comfortable.

• Establishing clarity on the vision and strategy while still in discovery mode with many unknowns.

• Navigating complex challenges in the travel industry while leveraging the team's technology experience.

• Balancing protecting the existing business with threading new technologies and opportunities for growth.

• Understanding the psychology of stakeholders who are most comfortable maintaining the status quo.

• The importance of urgency and results-oriented progress while bringing people along the change journey.

• Seeking to simplify complex ideas and problems to gain alignment and move forward effectively as a team.

Our Approach

For us, the surefire way to success is to take a co-creative approach. We invented one and called it Structured Visual Thinking™. 

It allows us to assess current knowledge rapidly and identify important gaps and insights by being comprehensively impartial and objective. 

As a result, we can create a set of data-rich visual frameworks that can reflect and embrace all the important dimensions of a successful program.

• A successful plan rests on appreciating the concurrent conditions and context but must not restrain future thinking.

• There’s a set of strategic conversations to align and create common meaning amongst the leadership to build the business's plan and direction. 

• There’s always an operational and organizational aspect so that an organisation can execute the strategy that knows how and why to function accordingly.

The Main Point:

We’ve learned the hard way that it’s easy to identify the solution before figuring out the real problem. We’ve witnessed it far too often and seen many businesses solve the wrong problems really well. 

This is why we start with a rigorous program approach that avoids solutions until we have built the blueprints and frameworks. 

Within these frameworks far better solutions always emerge and additionally become more meaningful as they are co-created with the team that must own and execute them.

Suggested Program

involve a core set of carefully selected stakeholders with expectations set accordingly. 

Agreeing on the exam question. 

“How does the business need to think and operate, prepare, transform, sustain and achieve the agreed goals and ambitions in the new market conditions?”

 Sub-Text:

• Create the conditions for scale and growth across the entire ecosystem/network.

• Exploit the existing (and forthcoming) competitive tools and technologies that will rapidly change the industry over the next 3-5 years.

• Create the appropriate/performance culture to ensure we remain sustainable and market-leading.

Engagement And Ownership

At the heart of our approach, a central element will be a face-to-face immersive session involving the critical stakeholders.

This takes the form of rich conversations within a sequence of logical models. It plays out over several days (TBD), during which we both facilitate and sketch out several frameworks visually. One of these is the ‘blueprint’ for the future. 

It allows people to continuously ‘build’ the future by adding fresh components to the blueprint as it evolves. This will enable them to put their fingerprints on the vision and develop it over time while maintaining an increasingly clear and accurate big picture. 

We suggest creating and testing hypotheses through this process to get stakeholder commitment and ownership before finalizing plans.

Ahead of this, we would start collating, synthesising and analysing available and related knowledge and producing the right frameworks for critical thinking based on the right information. 

Our approach is founded on voraciously clawing through information to find what matters most rather than producing a lot of superficial work to show hours wasted. 

The goal is to reach real insights and quickly focus on the real issues and opportunities.

The collaboration process we suggest is open-ended, allowing us to get stakeholders directly involved in shaping the blueprint to truly test ownership and then widen and develop through quick wins with the key targets or lower-hanging fruit.

It is important to make plans flexible enough until people can add their perspectives. We discussed that the end of June would be a reasonable timeline for finishing this work and achieving some practical results.

Step One - Design And Development:

• Take A Fuller Brief: Over the coming days, we will take a fuller brief, receive information, agree on the team and the required mix, and set calendars for key interviews.

• Expand Our Knowledge: We will conduct desk research and objectively identify the landscape you operate in. 

• Engineer The Frameworks And Blueprints: From the initial knowledge baseline, we will design a more detailed program and develop the frameworks—the tools we will bring to the leadership event at a date to be determined. 

• The Blueprint Space: The space we secure is an essential program component. We create a space designed to think and work. Sufficient space and light provide a conducive experience for the leadership—a space to think radically differently while focusing on what matters for the future of the business. 

• Start Logistics: We need to secure the appropriate venue based on the detailed planning. The logistics are to ensure we are on the ground, have identified a suitable space ahead of time, and prepare the backdrop for the sessions to fit the available space.

• Conclude Logistics: Typically, sessions are two to three days long, and we require three days ahead of that to create the stimulus and safe space for the work we will do together. We mentioned a 100-foot plain white wall scenario. Concurrently, we will ensure travel, accommodation, and all session security measures are in place. See the images at the related links.

Step Two - Creating The Blueprint And Frameworks:

• Large-Scale Visualisation: We will facilitate impartial and objective discussions while building the large-scale structured visualization. 

• Real-Time Thinking: We listen, capture, consider, synthesize, organise, and refine the discussion within a logical and comprehensive framework. 

• Logical And Practical: All of the above is designed to arrive at the best answer to the question asked. We co-create to achieve the outcome together. Our approach is both inclusive and creative, always mindful and respectful of the expertise in the room. You.

• Post-Session Regroup: To reset (where relevant) the system's subsequent stages) and to assess* what is needed to complete the blueprint and prepare it for later stages.

  *The assessment will determine what already exists and is fit for purpose, what exists but needs to change and what is missing.

Step Three - Consolidation and Conclusions

• Reflection And Evolution: We reflect and further develop the results after the sessions. Further regroups may be required.

• The Visual Assets Produced: This takes several forms, including high-definition images, enabling us to rebuild the frameworks at full/life-size if required. 

• The Written Assets Produced: We create summaries of what was discussed, explain the recommendations that will emerge, and be ready for the next steps.

• The Story Side Of Things: We will create narratives—the storylines that help convey the result to the wider audience and key stakeholders.

• The Toolkit: We often create high-impact tools, certain parts of the framework, or the whole framework. These are blueprints themselves, as well as supportive techniques for the next steps and future planning rounds.

Optional Framework Integrity Platform: This first stage may benefit significantly from the platform developed to host the frameworks and maintain the integrity of intent over time. It is optional as, at this stage, we don’t know enough about the internal program management and governance (capabilities/systems) of the change program that would emerge.

Step Four - Embedding The Technology Vision

The aim is to bring new methods, technologies, and tools into the business through the blueprinting process.

• The Aim Of The Platform: To evolve the company into a tech-enabled service provider as understanding increases through the network-wide stakeholder involvement in shaping the blueprint and realising the overall value and impact to the group.

• The Aim Of The Blueprint In This Process: Use the blueprint to gain alignment on how and when to integrate new tools while maintaining existing revenue and customer relationships.

• The Vision/Roadmap: The strategy is to ‘thread’ new technologies gradually through existing business operations to modernize and evolve the business model over time without damaging revenue and growth. Initially, the new technologies will be introduced as a ‘white labelled’ opportunity to test with customers before fully integrating.

• Create The Case - Local And Global: By ‘collaborative blueprinting’, we would be able to test various hypotheses related to the technology and place the data and evidence into the overarching system of value. This would show the local/specific value per network member and the overall compound value of the technology in a graphical format.

• Identify New Revenue Streams: A byproduct of working at scale and visually ‘as a system’. Identifying new, more innovative revenue streams is possible by testing business cases and hypotheses around new tech capabilities.

Step Five - Roll Out Engaged Blueprinting

Once we have a valid hypothesis and everyone involved in taking it out to the network can fully facilitate and defend the business case within it - the proposed next step is a similar sequence of events. Interim regroups may be required.

• The Intention: Getting the ‘network’ fingerprints on the vision, gradually bringing them along through engagement with the ‘blueprint’ process. The goal is to surface quick wins (identify areas of potential resistance) through collaborative hypothesis testing and engagement. Getting the right stakeholders to directly add new content/content to shape the blueprint early is key to truly testing commitment and ownership of the evolving plans.

• The Data-Backed Approach: The evolving blueprint will address resistance by showing the logic, evidence, and data (Business Case) and the inevitability of changes to meet market sustainability/opportunity backed up by supporting evidence and increasing network buy-in.

• Identify The Cadence: Assess the rollout's sequence. Understand the whole network sufficiently to identify the likely early successes and plan accordingly. At this point, there will be both pragmatic and political choices.

• Clarify And Set Expectations: At the heart of the plan is getting stakeholders involved in shaping the blueprint to test their commitment and ownership of the vision, so managing their expectations is vital. A balance of transparency, encouragement, and leadership must be agreed upon and scripted.

• Audience Selection: Regional leaders and those with institutional knowledge should be involved in helping build out the blueprint over time. The existing leadership may not be the right people for this process (initially), as they are most comfortable maintaining the status quo.

• The Developing Image: The blueprint is a dynamic visual construct. It allows us to bring people along at their own pace, avoiding losing stakeholders and increasing critical understanding. We can bring people on board sooner or later as needed while maintaining a clear overall vision.

The Team

Esellas is a team of people who have worked together for many years and before that in related fields, such as technology and consulting—marketing, Industry, And Government. The business leaders will be working on this program. 

This highly specialized work has been delivered in partnership with clients over a long period and now represents a well-developed workflow and sharing of responsibilities. Our in-house studio and support facilities enable rapid turnaround of key visual and written materials.

Commercial Approach

Based on the five stages outlined above, here's a recommended breakdown of work with costs and time expected:

Stage One - Design and Development:

This stage lays the foundation for a successful transformation program. By thoroughly gathering information, conducting desk research, and analyzing the landscape, we comprehensively understand the current state and context. This enables us to engineer robust frameworks and blueprints to guide the subsequent stages. Securing and preparing the blueprint space and meticulous logistics planning ensure a conducive environment for effective collaboration and knowledge sharing. This stage is crucial in setting the direction and creating the conditions for a well-structured, impartial, and objective approach to solving the right problems.

1.1. Full briefing and information gathering

1.2. Desk research and landscape analysis

1.3. Framework and blueprint engineering

1.4. Securing and preparing the blueprint space

1.5. Logistics planning and execution

Expected Time: 3-4 Weeks

Stage Two - Creating the Blueprint And Frameworks:

This stage is the heart of the transformation program. Through large-scale visualization sessions, we facilitate rich conversations and capture insights in real time. We co-create practical outcomes that align with the overall vision by synthesizing and refining the discussions within a logical framework. This stage is essential for engaging stakeholders, building ownership, and ensuring that the blueprint reflects the organisation's collective wisdom. It also allows for testing hypotheses and making plans flexible enough to incorporate diverse perspectives, setting the stage for a truly collaborative and impactful transformation.

2.1. Facilitation of large-scale visualization sessions

2.2. Real-time capture, synthesis, and refinement of discussions

2.3. Co-creation of logical and practical outcomes

Expected Time: 1-2 Weeks

Stage Three - Consolidation and Conclusions:

This stage is critical for solidifying the outcomes of the blueprinting process. Through post-session reflection and development, we refine the insights and recommendations generated during the previous stages. By producing high-quality visual and written assets, we create a clear and compelling record of the transformation journey. Developing narratives and storylines helps communicate the vision to a wider audience, while toolkits and blueprints provide practical implementation support. The optional Framework Integrity Platform ensures the long-term consistency and coherence of the transformation effort. This stage is vital for maintaining momentum, aligning stakeholders, and setting the stage for successful execution.

3.1. Post-session reflection and development

3.2. Production of visual assets (high-definition images, life-size frameworks)

3.3. Creation of written assets (summaries, recommendations, next steps)

3.4. Development of narratives and storylines for wider audience engagement

3.5. Toolkit creation (high-impact tools, blueprints, supportive techniques)

3.6. Optional: Framework Integrity Platform development

Expected Time: 3 weeks

Stage Four - Embedding the Technology Vision:

This stage is where the transformation program begins to integrate new methods, technologies, and tools into the organization. By leveraging the blueprinting process, we gain alignment on how and when to introduce these innovations while minimizing disruption to existing revenue streams and customer relationships. Developing a clear vision and roadmap for gradually threading new technologies through operations is key to modernizing the business model over time. Through collaborative blueprinting, we create compelling business cases that demonstrate the value of the new technology at both the local and global levels. This stage is essential for driving innovation, identifying new revenue streams, and positioning the organization for long-term success in a rapidly evolving industry.

4.1. Integration of new methods, technologies, and tools through blueprinting

4.2. Alignment on integration strategy while maintaining revenue and customer relationships

4.3. Development of vision/roadmap for gradual threading of new technologies

4.4. Creation of local and global business cases through collaborative blueprinting

4.5. Identification of new revenue streams through system-wide visual analysis

Expected Time: Runs Concurrently with Above

Stage Five - Roll Out Engaged Blueprinting:

This stage is where the transformation program engages the broader network of stakeholders. By facilitating network-wide involvement in shaping the evolving blueprint, we build commitment and ownership of the vision. We identify quick wins and address potential resistance through hypothesis testing and data-backed approaches, ensuring a smooth and effective rollout. By carefully assessing the rollout sequence, setting clear expectations, and selecting the right audiences, we create a tailored engagement strategy that brings people along at their own pace. The ongoing development and refinement of the visual blueprint maintain a clear overall vision while allowing for flexibility and adaptation. This stage is crucial for driving widespread adoption, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, and realizing the full potential of the transformation program.

5.1. Facilitation of network-wide engagement with the evolving blueprint

5.2. Identification of quick wins and potential resistance areas through hypothesis testing

5.3. Data-backed approach to address resistance and showcase business case

5.4. Assessment of rollout sequence and planning

5.5. Clarification and setting of expectations for stakeholders

5.6. Audience Selection and Engagement Strategy Development

5.7. Ongoing development and refinement of the visual blueprint

Expected Time: TBD (8-12 weeks But A Wider Discussion)