Looking to add strategic value for your clients isn’t revolutionary. Restructuring your entire process to achieve it? That’s thinking wrong.
“We were determined to leave the tragically unproductive ‘us vs. them’ structure behind. Our partnership with Solve Next has changed how we operate. We harness the ingenuity of our teams and our clients, solving gnarly problems more efficiently because we work together.” —Adam Butler, CEO, The Butler Bros.
Challenge: The Butler Bros. is a communications agency with a strong client roster and a history of creative excellence. But their industry is evolving at lightning pace, with agencies flailing to keep up. To stay relevant and become even more valuable, they wanted a stronger strategic foothold with both potential and existing clients—fast.
Story: The Butler Bros. brought us in to help with their client, the College Board. We worked closely with agency co-founders Adam and Marty Butler and their team to design and facilitate a custom Think Wrong Blitz—a series of drills aimed against a specific challenge—and from that day, both Butler Bros. and the College Board were hooked.
The Butler Bros. began to picture how they could use our Think Wrong system with other clients, or in new business development, to engage on a strategic level far earlier in the process. Rather than receiving and executing on a client-led brief, they could challenge and push the direction from the beginning, helping clients embrace bolder communication strategies and arrive at more surprising territories.
Soon the agency was building Think Wrong Blitzes into their process with all of their clients and even using Think Wrong drills to kick off internal meetings and brainstorm sessions. Recognizing the potential of integrating Thinking Wrong into their services, they became Partners with Solve Next in 2015.
Since then, several of their teams have completed our Master Class, learning to confidently design and run Blitzes on their own. Their membership in our Think Wrong Lab provides them with the resources they need to Think Wrong anywhere, any time. And, of course, they still call on us from time to time to design and run sessions they want to participate in themselves.
Results: Since our first Blitz with The Butler Bros. they’ve completely disrupted typical client/agency roles, building strong relationships with their clients who are invited to participate and co-create from start to finish. They’ve used the Think Wrong frameworks, tools, and language to establish their own new approach of “Radical Collaboration”—a bold proposition that serves and attracts the type of brave, team-focused clients their agency thrives on.
Integrate Think Wrong into your offer to increase your impact and build more strategic, long-lasting relationships—with current and prospective clients.
A selection of alliance partners and clients Solve Next has helped think wrong about strategic value and impact.
A selection of challenges Solve Next has helped our alliance partners and clients think wrong about.
“How might the College Board and Khan Academy inspire young people to claim the discipline of practice as their own—so they are ready for any test life might give them?”
“How might we integrate thinking wrong into Tencue in a way that is exciting and energizing (rather than stressful and burdensome) so that we can find new and sustainable ways to grow as people, peers, and professionals?”
“What might a truly distinctive Silicon Valley incubation product, process, and platform—which delivers startup businesses to the G1000—offer?”
“How might we increase the involvement in the Bizlab of the extended community (internal and external) in a way that exchanges current challenges and experiences of other teams to accelerate impact?”
“What might our shared long-term vision be? How might Corporate and Employee Giving sustain and increase its impact for Genentech, employees, and the communities we serve?”
“How might we transform transportation and mobility in cities?”
Radical Collaborator.
Read Adam’s blog about how Think Wrong inspired a defining strength of The Butler Bros.
Want to get radical too?
Contact us to explore how to transform the work you do and the value you deliver.