6 months ago
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The world sits on the edge of its seat, watching DeepSeek.com take a leadership role in AI large language models or LLMs. As a leader, you may have wondered: Why can’t my company perform the same trick? Could we find similar breakthrough insights?
As your team strategises, you grow tired of excuses, even your own. Why? Stakeholders demand to know why your organisation isn’t making a game-changing difference.
You labour to explain: We lack capital. Time. Talent. Technology. A Silicon Valley culture. But then along comes DeepSeek, interrupting the world with a small budget, relatively low expertise, cultural disadvantages and only a few years of effort.
What makes them so special? Even if you lead a non-profit, how can you produce game-changing strategy naturally, if not routinely? Here are three clues.
Focus on powerful insights
A quick look at DeepSeek shows that they were able to overcome obvious handicaps with superior strategy.
But to outsiders, it appears miraculous.
According to the conventional wisdom available before their recent announcement, it was impossible to produce such a breakthrough. However, a closer examination shows that the Chinese team pulled together a combination of unique features. Separately, each one may have been unremarkable, but collectively they created a shattering disruption.
This fact implies other teams could have done the same.
I suggest that a key to their success is their capacity to harness the tiny building block of innovation - a single insight. Such insights may appear minor, but when combined, they sometimes produce game-changing results.
But the important question is: Can your team do the same? Let’s turn to the process of creating your corporate strategy, which is itself built on insights intended to move the needle on your results.
Here’s what you might have to change to achieve this effect.
Give up ‘big man’ thinking
Local CEOs have a tendency to believe that they don’t have a strategy problem. In their minds, they have all the insights they need drawn from a superior source: their own thoughts.
As proof, they point to the lack of strategic thinking in their colleagues.
“Not one of them has ever come up with a truly strategic insight!” They point out the habit of only tackling immediate problems, ignoring the reality that the company rewards this behaviour.
Experience tells me that they could, in fact, be correct.
As the top leader, the truth is that you alone maintain a view of the entire business from end to end. Consequently, as a CEO, MD or Chair, you drive the strategy.
However, this may explain why game-changing strategy is so rare.
Consider your company to be so complex that no single individual, in any position, is able to generate all the insights it needs. Neither can an outsider armed with lengthy reports.
Instead, you need your entire leadership team to produce DeepSeek-like strategy. But not in its everyday mindset and culture.
Perhaps, to get the breakout thinking you desire, you must re-look at your team of managers. Then intervene to unlock the insights you aspire to see.
Workshop and unlock your C-suite
If you have a budget and several years to play with, invest in long-term training and coaching. If, like most, you don’t, organise a face-to-face workshop to tap into their best thinking. Why?
Unfortunately, you can’t unleash necessary insights with a survey. Or bonuses. Or via individual interviews. Also, don’t try doing this in your weekly problem-solving meetings.
Instead, learn some lessons from the skills of writing a good ChatGPT prompt.
To get decent results you feed the LLM with some data, offer it a framework to use, craft just the right words in your query, then hit . Magically, the AI chatbot comes up with something surprising.
Now, consider doing the same with your C-suite.
After several local experiments, I can say that a top team could be prompted to find its own magical insights. How might you structure your workshop?
First, set aside a few hours for the group to tackle a single, difficult issue. For the session:
1) Craft the best prompts possible. Be sure to include alternatives which address the origin of the problem;
2) Give them local data. Add internal company information which has credibility;
3) Feed the team with external trends. Pick ones which neither you nor your competitors can stop;
4) Steal a shortcut from consulting firms by introducing fresh analytic frameworks; and
5) Encourage the use of AI. This group needs LLM firepower to vault past conventional thinking.
Combine these emerging insights into your next strategic plan and you’ll be on your way to game-changing results.
Francis Wade is a management consultant and author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity. To search past columns on productivity, strategy and business processes, or give feedback, email: columns@fwconsulting.com
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