Toyota Financial Services

The challenge

TFS needed to look at every process, procedure, and product, in effect its total business model, to get profits up sustainably or risk getting left behind. The session had to be collaborative and grounded in business realities, identifying cost-cutting options while inspiring disruptive new business ideas that could actually be taken forward.

Our approach

Patrick opened by having participants map present-day TFS on the Business Model Canvas, surfacing surprisingly diverse assumptions about fundamentals like who the customer is. Around 60 pre-submitted ideas were sorted into incremental, cost-cutting, and disruptive categories, priming the group to think bigger. Small groups then mapped detailed business models for four strategic directions and dramatized them through storytelling, role-playing consumers, dealers, and employees.

The results

• Four concrete strategic options: one incremental (refining insurance) and three revolutionary (becoming the financial brand of choice, halving costs, and surprising dealers with new products and services).
• Ideas were made concrete before leaving the room, with clear plans to take them forward and no shortage of volunteers.
• The approach's success rested on working with whole options via the nine-part canvas, focusing on key assumptions rather than personal positions, and rendering options in tangible visual form.

The method stayed with the team. It always does.