What digital strategy is and what makes it a good one is as different between the accompanying doodles and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. There are, apparently, geniuses that will be able to pull concepts that deliver at the drop of the hat without resorting to strategy. Whether by luck, or just snake oil, these are rare and inconsistent. For the rest of us, the hard yards of process, planning and examining workings are our routes to success...

1. www.thinkplaysolve.com
building a digital strategy
last update: 4 June 2020
What digital strategy is and what makes it a good one is as different
between the accompanying doodles and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona
Lisa. There are, apparently, geniuses that will be able to pull
concepts that deliver at the drop of the hat without resorting to
strategy. Whether by luck, or just snake oil, these are rare and
inconsistent. For the rest of us, the hard yards of process, planning
and examining workings are our routes to success.
A good strategy has at a minimum, the same qualities as a good
story:
• a beginning: the scene is set
• a destination: there is an aim
• a journey: the steps to get there
• a device: the tools to get the job done
• the cast: those people that will help the strategy along its way
Regardless of what the digital strategy is set to achieve, without
touching on each of these areas it is impossible to devise and
execute an optimal strategy. There is no one single approach to the
delivery of a digital strategy, yet each must touch upon these areas
to a greater or lesser extent to achieve success.

2. www.thinkplaysolve.com
an approach – think play solve
Think play solve reflects the three stages to a successful strategy,
miss one in this approach and the strategy, projects and project
stages within will suffer.
Each of these stages runs into the next, not just once but as an
iterative cycle for continual improvement. Tasks at each stage
breakdown to:
think
first analyse
• what is the ambition?
• who is this for?
• how does this break
down?
• what have you got?
• how did it do?
• what can be done
better?
play
use your analysis
• where would you have
maximum impact?
• what would you do in
these places?
• how will it deliver
towards the ambition?
• how will you measure
that?
• imagine it built, are you
delivering
improvement?
• what do you need to get
it done?
solve
actualise and measure
• what is MVP?
• how do you get there
and beyond?
• what is needed to keep
momentum?
• is it hitting ongoing
KPIs?
• are there quick wins?
• what is the next stage to
achieve the ambition?

3. www.thinkplaysolve.com
In each of the stages the parts of the story can be found:
• think: where do we start and where do we hope to end
• play: what tools do we have and who can help us get there
• solve: the journey we take to get there and how we conclude
The approach taken to building a digital strategy must reflect the
definition of digital strategy:
• digital strategy must be measurable, therefore the approach should
incorporate measurement
• digital strategy must evolve, therefore the approach must be amendable
• digital must grow, therefore the approach should be extendable
lifecycle
An often-repeated mistake is to set the lifecycle of a strategy by
arbitrary dates in a calendar. Whilst it is certainly true that stages,
and indeed projects, will have deadlines there is rarely a 'one size
fits all' answer to the length and lifecycle of a strategy.
Remember: Rome was not built in a day!
The evolution from nascent challenge to the ambition is delivered
through cycles, be they establishing a foothold, achieving or a
short-term boost to the bottom line, or to the longer-term mature
platform to establish your ambition.

4. www.thinkplaysolve.com
back to the story
Stories are important, Philip Pullman once said:
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing
we need most in the world.”
From the hushed voices floating in flickering firelight across pre-
historic caves to the latest blockbuster stories are how humanity
understands the world, and stories are how humanity shapes the
world. In that case why should digital strategy be any different? In
short it is not different, digital strategy must embrace stories; they
are far more than a useful analogy.
To fully envisage a digital strategy requires a level of understanding
that if not complete, certainly encompasses detail beyond the big
picture. The numbers view will always be in the subjective, the KPIs
and the reporting, and the subjective is not to be discounted. To
hold any digital strategy purely in the subjective balance sheet of
targets and results is misusing the ability to consider the objective.
The role of stories is best defined in narrative transportation theory
(Green and Brock, 2002; Van Laer, de Ruyter, Visconti, and Wetzels,
2014) where the mind places itself in the story and in such:
• Process the story
• Engage mentally and empathetically
• Create a world within a world
The transportation into the ‘story’ achieves absorption,
involvement, identification and flow (leading to optimal
experience), and immersion. In a complex system of many moving
parts this enables the results first subjective to be balanced by the
empathetic objective to ask
“Does this feel right?”
Furthermore with the specific ambition of a digital strategy in mind:
“How does this drive the story? Is this plausible?”

5. www.thinkplaysolve.com
It is then the nuts and bolts of analysis, the thinking, to provide the
foundation of the narrative and ensure that science removes any
bias.
together
Building a good digital strategy relies on both the approach and
the story. The approach is the process by which a proof can be
derived, workings can be assessed and measured, and the
foundations set to ensure correct rigor. The story is the empathetic
understanding of what and why, the doorway into the crux of the
ambition, and the constant reflected narrative that charts a course
between function and fantasy. They are the left and right
hemispheres of our brains working in tandem.

6. www.thinkplaysolve.com
a word on ambition
As stories are important so are words. When approaching the
everyday, as many projects are, ambition can seem grandiose at the
beginning. Projects are not strategy, but merely steppingstones
along the way, as goals and aims are not ambition. It is in the bigger
picture where strategy lives, building on simple ongoing goals,
timely achieved aims to an overarching ambition.
These terms define the granularity required to rapidly move from
big picture thinking or focus on the most minute of details. It is not
just the first step in a digital strategy that requires the setting and
alignment of aims and goals, but each iteration, and each must
come back to how they meet the ambition.
These are, however, for next time.