CR Team Blitz Challenge

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CR Team Blitz Challenge

Why might our 3 year plan matter, how might we improve it, and what might we do to act on its imperatives and successfully complete its initiatives?

On May 4–6, 2016, the Corporate Relations Team gathered at the Carmel Valley Ranch for the CR Team Blitz. The Blitz was an intensive, immersive effort to think wrong about our 3-year strategic plan.

Our objectives

Have fun

Get out to be inspired by a fresh setting and our teammates.

Dream about what we can achieve

Bring the Corporate Relations Team up to speed on the next 3-year plan.
Engage the team to identify and align our shared aspirations.
Imagine epic programs that might strengthen the Genentech brand.

Explore how we might best help

Expand on why our strategic framework matters, how we might improve it, and what we might do to successfully complete its initiatives.
Explore ways we might work together to accelerate how quickly we achieve our desired impact.
Identify the big questions raised by our 3-year strategy and how we might best answer them.

Prioritize and simplify

Imagine how we might align our day-to-day work with our impact vision, 3-year strategy, and strategic framework.
Identify what work we must do—and what work we might no longer do.

Grow and develop

Invest in our leadership skills and team.

Desired outcomes

Shared aspirations.
An enhanced Corporate Relations vision, strategy, strategic framework, and 3-year plan.
A prioritized portfolio of ideas for our next epic programs and projects, and for how we might operate at a higher level that we can test and fine-tune.
A prioritized set of big questions that we might explore to improve our impact and how we work.
Insight into what we must do—and what we might stop doing.
New leadership skills.
Enthusiasm and excitement about the next three years.

CR Team Blitz Approach

Think Wrong

We used a variety of Think Wrong Drills to explore the impact that the Corporate Relations Team might achieve over the next three years—and how we might accomplish that.

Think Wrong Practices

Dare to make a difference.

Find fresh inspiration.

Expand what’s possible.

Gain insights through making.

Discover what works.

Achieve impact sooner.

Think Wrong Drills

Framer-in-Chief
As Art
Beautiful Question
Milestone Making

Love & Loathe
Loathe to Love
Brand Heroes
Brand Takeover

Draw It
Name It

SASU
Epic x Doability
Stack It
Waypoints 3 Year Plan
The One Thing

View Blitz Guide

CR Team Blitz Outcomes

New insights, sharper focus, better alignment, greater impact.

The CR Team had an open and strategic discussion about our strategy, platforms, systems, tools, processes, people, ways of working together, value delivery, and reputation.

Seven Strategic Frameworks

One
Shared Framework

Strategy
In
Action

Measuring Our
Progress

Seven Strategic Frameworks

We explored a variety of ways to frame the Corporate Relations strategy.

We used Draw It—a Make Stuff Drills—to create unique expressions of our strategic framework. Our exploration revealed different ways that we might communicate our strategic framework:

The Relationships: Heart, Smart Art, Ransom Note

The Process: “Bill”

The Metaphor: Bus, Rocket, House

View Images

One Shared Framework

Synthesized Framework: Corporate Relations

The CRLT combined the best of the strategy frameworks to create a single framework.

The CRLT repeated additional cycles of Draw It—a Make Stuff Drill—to integrate the best of the full team’s thinking into a single framework to communicate Corporate Relations’ strategic focus and work.

Strategy in Action

We imagined strategic initiatives—campaigns, programs, and projects—that might help us achieve our strategic objectives.

We used Loathe to Love, Brand Takeover, and Name It—Let Go and Make Stuff Drills—to imagine strategic initiatives and explore their potential to drive Genentech reputation, amplify Genentech culture, and build and strengthen Corporate Relations competencies.

Of the 15 big ideas generated, six have been integrated into the Corporate Relations 3-year Plan.

Develop CR Professionals

Improve CR Systems, Processes, and Policies

Communication Super Heroes
We can relate.

The Epic Adventures of CR
It starts here.

Gee-Hive
Who run the world?

Brandstar
Get epic!

Celebrate Science

Project Hero
Leadership with purpose.

Crazy in Science
Everyday science for everyone.

The additional nine ideas offer inspiration for our existing programs and projects.

gFamily
When you’re here, you’re family.

Reimagining Health
Transforming community health.

Scientists. Patients. People. One goal: Life.

Genentech Gives
Give ’til it helps.

Freewheel
Ride on us.

Everyday Epic Campaign
Telling the story.

E4: Everyday Epic Employee Experience
Drink the Kool-Aid.

It’s the People, Stupid!
Every moment matters.

View Images

Measuring Our Progress

We explored what success might look like over the next three years.

We used Milestone Making and Waypoints—Be Bold and Move Fast Drills—to explore how we might measure our progress, creating “When” statements for each area of strategic focus.

We stacked ranked those statements from most useful measure of impact to least.

We then mapped our highest-priority statements onto a three-year timeline, creating milestones for our strategic work.

We dot-voted on those statements for importance to desired impact.

The CRLT then selected the milestones that might be most useful to Corporate Relations and for demonstrating progress to the EC.

Finally, the CRLT also mapped project start and finish dates—what CR will do—on the timeline.

2016

June ’16

CR Lab

Project Start: Global Digital Strategy and Governance

Launch Medicines

Project Start: Be the Breakthrough

Milestone: When GNE is involved in the White House Moonshot Program

Improve CR Systems, Processes, and Policies

Milestone: When we have an information graphic revealing our story mix

Milestone: When we have picked a date for the next CR offsite

July ’16

Empower Communities

Project Start: Foundation Reboot Plan