Can a Strategy Session Stop Strategic Diffusion at Arcton Systems?
Use the evidence to define the strategic challenge, choose a justified 3+1 architecture, protect decision quality, select methods and create a continuation system.
45 minutes
Scenario
Arcton Systems manufactures temperature-control equipment for food warehouses and provides service support. It employs 480 people, has three regional offices and operates its own engineering team. Revenue growth has almost stopped, while the CEO has announced an ambition to double the business in three years and proposed a four-day strategy session for 28 leaders. The draft agenda starts with the CEO’s answer, several familiar frameworks, idea generation and ten priorities.
- Your role
- Strategy lead and facilitator responsible for the session design and the 90-day execution cycle
- Method
- Scenario Planning
Evidence pack
Revenue
Equipment sales generate 71% of revenue; category growth slowed from 11% to 3%.
Margin
Gross margin is 18% for equipment and 31% for service contracts.
Customers
Nine of 14 large customers described downtime as a critical risk; only three agreed to discuss paid monitoring.
Pilots
Monitoring reduced unplanned visits in two free pilots, but neither tested willingness to pay.
Segments
International chains require integrations and 24/7 support; mid-sized regional warehouses accept a standardised service.
Sales
Sales incentives depend on equipment value at signature, not service revenue or handoff quality.
Capacity
The engineering team can manage 12 major changes at once; 31 initiatives are active.
Portfolio
None of the 31 initiatives has been stopped during the past 18 months.
Competitor
A major competitor acquired a monitoring platform but has not announced a commercial offer.
Decision quality
Eight of 11 reviewed investment decisions recorded neither alternatives nor revision conditions.
Team view
82% of leaders understand the doubling ambition; 29% can explain the priority customer and growth mechanism.
Finance
€4 million is available for investment next year; existing commitments across 31 initiatives require €6.2 million.
Leader
At the previous two sessions, the group endorsed the CEO’s original proposal without material change.
Geography
Six regional execution owners can participate only remotely.
Constraints
- The board will make the final investment decision four weeks after the session.
- The company cannot build a 24/7 international service and scale a standardised offer simultaneously without additional hiring.
- Individual interview and survey responses cannot be shown to leaders.
- Remote participants must be able to influence critical decisions.
- The session cannot promise doubled revenue as a guaranteed result.
- Market and operational tests are possible within 90 days, but a new business model cannot be fully launched.
Case steps
Work through each prompt using the evidence pack. Answers and rubric weights stay protected in the interactive flow.
Define a strategic challenge that names the business result and constraint, uses at least four evidence items, separates the doubling ambition from strategy, keeps genuine alternatives open and avoids prescribing a service subscription.
Specify three to five decisions the team must prepare, decisions outside scope, required day-three artefacts, the board approval rule and one condition that should pause the decision pending more evidence.
Choose three shared days, an immediate fourth day, or an integration day after 7–14 days. For every day, define the main question, two critical blocks, artefact, participants and equal influence for remote leaders.
Design the CEO’s 12–15-minute opening, a block where the CEO speaks last, a block the CEO leaves, the decision rule, a first-week commitment and the response to team recommendations.
Select two models and two exercises. For each, define the question or work mechanism, evidence input, observable behaviour, debrief, artefact, transfer and why a popular alternative would be weaker.
Design a 90-day strategic experiment with an assumption, test, owner, baseline, leading signal, outcome, guardrail, threshold and explicit decisions on days 14, 30, 60 and 90.