Mastering The Most Useful Strategy Tools: Here are the ChatGPT Prompts You Need

The ability to make the most of the tools at your disposal is an invaluable skill. No-one did this better than MacGyver.

Over the course of his 1980s TV series, he routinely escaped from seemingly hopeless situations using Duct Tape, his trusty Swiss Army Knife, and even chocolate bars as makeshift tools.

Strategists are lucky. They don’t need to create tools from scratch. Plenty of useful ones already exist. MacGyver fans will realize that tools can and should be adapted to fit specific situations but let’s get the basics right first.

I picked three of my favourite tools and created prompts you can use to turn ChatGPT into your instructor. All you need to do is post the prompts into ChatGPT4 or Bing (in creative mode).

See this as a sequel to my last Newsletter article, where I shared a number of prompts that turn ChatGPT into your strategy teacher. This time we look at tools that help you in specific situations: a nightmare competitor contest to pre-empt disruption, scenario planning to prepare for an uncertain future, and the strategy canvas to identify new niche market opportunities.

How to use the prompts

Before you get busy with the training, let me offer a few words of caution. First, generative AI does not always behave in the same way. While I did multiple runs and revised the prompts, this is no guarantee for consistent behaviour.

Second, ChatGPT will teach a particular flavour of the tools. In other words I let my inner MacGyver take over. Generative AI is used widely and pretty consistently as a strategy tool. Hence there is sufficient data for ChatGPT to leverage. The same cannot be said for scenario planning. This is used in many different ways and the Nightmare Competitor Contest (below) is pretty new, having been introduced in the 2021 book Open Strategy, which I co-authored. So for these two tools I directed ChatGPT quite strongly and deliberately.

Third, an easy way to tailor the prompts to your interest is changing the company you use as a case study. Here prompts turn ChatGPT into a training tool, but the real value is in applying them in larger groups and workshop settings. That’s when you benefit from the wisdom of the crowd.

Time to get your hands on the prompts. Remember, all you need to do is copy them into ChatGPT-4 or Bing (in creative mode).

Nightmare Competitor Contest

The first tool helps you to stay ahead of disruption. The idea is simple: develop an imaginary disruptive competitor for your company. Using the prompt, you will learn how to set this up.

While doing this in ChatGPT is already a great way to stretch your imagination, the full power of this tool unfolds if you run through these steps in a workshop with competing teams. By doing so, you are able to involve staff who are not usually part of the strategy making process and people from outside your firm. In other words, you are opening up your strategy.

Prompt: I want to use you as my MBA teacher. Can we do a lesson on how to use a Nightmare Competitor Contest with the intention of preparing me for potential disruption. As your main source of information, use the following book: Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite by Christian Stadler, Julia Hautz, Kurt Matzler, and Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen. Chain of thought: 1) first explain what a Nightmare Competitor is and the steps that are necessary in this exercise. The steps are (a) think of big disruptive trends in your industry, (b) come up with a list of possible business ideas, (c) pick one of these ideas and develop a more detailed business model for this idea, (d) pitch this idea to a jury who selects the best idea, (e) discuss what that means for your company 2) use an example to practice with the user. Let's take Deutsche Bahn. Offer a few links where the user can read more about Deutsche Bahn and then start the conversation asking the user about (a). 3) Respond to their answer and explain whether their answer makes sense and what you would add. 4) move through steps like this. For (b) ask for only one business idea and for (e) you need to explain that this would usually put to a vote but obviously can’t be done here where you don’t have competing teams. 5) Once you moved through the whole tool, ask the user what they learnt. This can be a short back and forth conversation. 6) Summarize what the user has learnt and make sure to remind the user that the Nightmare Competitor exercise is a way to think about potential disruption without the restrictions of your own business. The other point that needs to be raised in the end is that the best way to develop a nightmare competitor is by having different teams compete against each other, each trying to develop the best nightmare competitor idea.

Scenario Planning

It’s impossible to predict the future but we can increase the odds of taking the right decision today, if we consider multiple scenarios. This is what Scenario Planning can do. The tool connects the current way of how you do business with possible futures.

Prompt: I want to use you as my MBA teacher. Can we do a lesson on how to set up a Scenario Planning exercise. At the beginning explain that the future is unpredictable. Hence it makes sense to think of multiple futures. Scenario planning is a tool that allows you to do this and connect it with the way you are doing business. Explain that you will go through the different steps of a scenario planning exercise, using a Cruise Ship operator as an example. Chain of thought: 1) In Step 1 you ask the user what are the biggest questions your company needs to address to prosper in future years? Provide 1 example not more. The user will return to this question in the end, bringing together an understanding of how the business runs (i.e. its business model) and the different scenarios. After the user answers, respond and add other important questions if they are missing. 2) Step 2 ask how a big Curise Ship operator is currently keeping costs under control and how it increases the willingness to pay of its customers. It’s a simple way to understand what drives the business. Again just 1 example. And after the user answers, respond and elaborate. 3) Step 3 the user has to look at the future of the environment in which cruise ships operates. Ask: which aspects of the environment are highly unpredictable but potentially very impactful for a Cruise Ship Operator? Give one example again. After the user responds, explain that two factors that are particularly important are to what extent consumers care about climate change associated with travel and what the preferences are for different consumer groups. 4) Step 4 Ask the user to write two very short stories that capture how the world develops taking the two categories chosen in the previous step into account. Important: both stories talk about both categories but in different ways. Once they have written their story, you will rewrite it and make it more accessible. 5) Step 5: ask how the user would address the important question from Step 1 keeping both the scenarios and the way the business works in their mind. 6) Summarize what the user has learnt and remind the user that the main benefit of scenario planning is the ability to think about multiple futures – which is pretty useful considering nobody can predict the future.

Strategy Canvas

Competing in the same space as everyone else is not smart. “Blue Ocean Strategy” suggests an alternative path: pursue profitable new niche markets. And the tool at the heart of the book is the Strategy Canvas.

Prompt: I want to use you as my MBA teacher. Can we do a lesson on how to use a Strategy Canvas. Here is a useful source for the steps to take the user through: https://strategiccoffee.chriscfox.com/2012/10/how-to-use-strategy-canvas.html Use Cirque de Soleil as the example. Offer some links. Chain of thought: 1) explain each step and ask user to answer for Cirque de Soleil. Do not tell the answer before the user answers. 2) respond and elaborate on answers from user after each step. 3) summarize in the end