Purpose is the newest deck in the Topaasia® serious game family. It was made in collaboration with Vincit's Redcell team.
The game is for an organisation's upper management, and it is used to discuss the organisation's big picture. For a smaller company this works as a general-purpose deck, so to speak, for reflecting on the company's future and its ability to meet it. Interviewed about the creation of the deck are three members of Redcell: Tuukka Sarkki, Risto Nykänen and Sami Suominen.
In this blog:
-What is Redcell?
-The paradigm shifts of digitalisation
-The change brought by digitalisation and purpose
-The contents of the Purpose deck
-Organisations' growing pains of change
-How to recognise the need to play the Purpose game?
I Ecosystem > enemies.
Traditional strategy views the market as a battlefield with "us and our opponents". Redcell believes that flourishing comes from thinking of the market as an ecosystem. At the core is reciprocity, with the understanding that transactions other than monetary ones also matter. The only way to succeed in networks is to be sufficiently transparent, and everyone must understand what benefit each party gets from the network.
II Digital strategy is THE strategy.
A strategy should not have a separate digital strategy branch; they are the same thing. Soon we will live in a world where everything that can be automated and digitalised will be.
III The concept of "finished" changes.
Finland's manufacturing industry has long held a paradigm that aims for the product to be finished. The product's value creation potential is at its maximum when the seller signs the contract with the customer. Then the value creation potential declines while the product sits in warehouses and logistics centres. This is a poor paradigm for a digital product.
With a digital product, the starting point is getting into production quickly, so that the resulting cash flow can fund further development and customer feedback can be gathered to guide it. The product is never finished, things are always in production, and their value creation potential grows as a function of time.
Redcell repeats and validates these points, and according to them there has not been a single meeting where the management team of a Finnish listed company would not accept these ideas. Yet the appetite for risk in these matters is sometimes low. Even if you accept the paradigm shifts, it is still often easier to go with the traditional strategy process, because there is an established partner for it and it has not yet failed too badly.
Every Topaasia deck has four suits, each containing 13 different cards. The four suits of the Purpose deck are purpose, future, change capability and networks.
What is RedCell?
Redcellis a unit of Vincit Plc and the force that brings together Vincit's entire service offering. In plain terms, Redcell does management consulting and helps its customers look at the horizon and shift it in a different direction. Their slogan is indeed Transpositioning the horizon.The tidal wave of digitalisation, and how should you think about it?
According to Redcell, most Finnish organisations hold it to be true that a great tidal wave of automation and digitalisation is coming. In that tidal wave, companies that have only succeeded in local markets will no longer thrive, because automation breaks down language barriers and makes formerly difficult things easier. For succeeding in digitalisation, Redcell has identified a few essential paradigm shifts, and understanding them can help in dealing with digitalisation:
I Ecosystem > enemies.
Traditional strategy views the market as a battlefield with "us and our opponents". Redcell believes that flourishing comes from thinking of the market as an ecosystem. At the core is reciprocity, with the understanding that transactions other than monetary ones also matter. The only way to succeed in networks is to be sufficiently transparent, and everyone must understand what benefit each party gets from the network.
II Digital strategy is THE strategy.
A strategy should not have a separate digital strategy branch; they are the same thing. Soon we will live in a world where everything that can be automated and digitalised will be.
III The concept of "finished" changes.
Finland's manufacturing industry has long held a paradigm that aims for the product to be finished. The product's value creation potential is at its maximum when the seller signs the contract with the customer. Then the value creation potential declines while the product sits in warehouses and logistics centres. This is a poor paradigm for a digital product.
With a digital product, the starting point is getting into production quickly, so that the resulting cash flow can fund further development and customer feedback can be gathered to guide it. The product is never finished, things are always in production, and their value creation potential grows as a function of time.
Redcell repeats and validates these points, and according to them there has not been a single meeting where the management team of a Finnish listed company would not accept these ideas. Yet the appetite for risk in these matters is sometimes low. Even if you accept the paradigm shifts, it is still often easier to go with the traditional strategy process, because there is an established partner for it and it has not yet failed too badly.
Digitalisation forces organisations to consider their own purpose
It is possible to survive the described tidal wave of digitalisation by being exceptionally distinctive: a company must be able to justify its purpose to itself and to others in some other way than through being Finnish or local. Helpful questions for working out your purpose can include:- How does my existence show in the customer's life?
- What is our significance to the bigger picture or the network?
Around the topic of purpose, things are not very concrete, and people do not know which matters are worth discussing when discussing purpose. We wanted to create a suitable framework for this, one that enables a constructive conversation on the subject. We saw that a Topaasia deck offers a brilliant opportunity for it. -Sami Suominen
The contents of the Purpose deck
Every Topaasia deck has four suits, each containing 13 different cards. The four suits of the Purpose deck are purpose, future, change capability and networks.
1. Spades - Purpose
Thinking through purpose replaces rigid strategy processes with market responsiveness. In traditional strategy work, half a year is spent making the strategy. By the time it is finished, it is old and the whole thing is done again. Operational management is tied up in it the whole time. This suit crystallises the matter into considering what our purpose is to the customer, and whether the things we are planning or doing are fulfilling that purpose. Then the matter does not need to be referred back to the strategy; the conversation can be had immediately.
Purpose is one of the core questions. All product development should happen purpose first. -Tuukka Sarkki
2. Clubs - Future
The future is the horizon that tells you why things are done in the first place. The cards in this suit offer ways to map the mechanisms RedCell has identified for whether a company has the readiness or capabilities to genuinely influence the future, or whether it is just wishful thinking.3. Diamonds - Change capability
The future contains changes, and coping with them requires capability. The suit deals with questions such as: What are our capabilities in relation to what is coming? Are there reasons why we are where we are now? Are there factors keeping us in place?
Without change capability there is no point even thinking about networking. -Risto Nykänen
4. Hearts - Networks
Networks bring out, at a practical level, the interactive nature of purpose. In networks, a bond forms with other actors, through which you can refine your own purpose. No one operates alone, in a bubble, and networks are often diverse: competitive fields, value chains and joint ventures. Networks tie the deck's three other suits together.Organisations' growing pains of change
In Redcell's experience, organisations struggle with almost all of the deck's suit themes, depending on the company's situation: if the company is an entrepreneur-led start-up, its purpose and future are fairly well in hand. Many larger companies, on the other hand, have long since been operating without their founders, in which case the purpose may have changed and the vision of the future can be very unclear. Networks are also often difficult for a traditional company, because it does not quite know how to behave in them or does not trust others.
How to recognise the need to play this deck?
It is good to look at and reflect on the company's own DNA when the operating conditions of the current business change so radically that the company's current abilities are no longer enough to succeed in it. Is it worth starting to do things for the new operating environment, or should other solutions be considered? This deck is a means for discussing that. The game weighs the participants through the game's themes and, through the cards, challenges them to think about the future. The playing group is prompted to take a stand on roles and on the leadership competence areas that are needed. It opens up a lot of possibilities.In the game you are dealing with big and significant matters. Hopefully the players dare to throw themselves in and discuss even difficult things through the game, although it is certainly challenging. -Sami SuominenThank you Tuukka, Risto and Sami! You can read more: www.redcell.fi https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsarkki/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/risto-nykanen/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sami-suominen/ You can order the Topaasia® Purpose deck from our online shop The deck is also available in English. Would you like to try the digital Topaasia® Purpose game for free? Or contact us directly galla@topaasia.com 040 0246624