How KOKO turned one strategy into three working markets
3
Markets on One Plan
2 qtr
To First Shared Cycle
KOKO had a strategy the board had approved and three markets that were each interpreting it differently. Growth in the home market was steady, but the two newer regions were building their own plans, their own targets, and in one case their own product roadmap.
The brief was not to write a new strategy. It was to find out why a perfectly reasonable one had failed to travel, and to build something the three market leads could actually run from.
Challenge
We cut the strategy down to five commitments every market had to hold, and made everything else explicitly local. Pricing method, customer segmentation, and reporting cadence became shared; channel mix, messaging, and hiring pace stayed with the regions.
A single quarterly planning rhythm replaced the annual deck. Each market lead now writes a one-page plan against the same five commitments, and the three plans are reviewed together in the same room rather than approved separately by the centre.
“We had the strategy. What we didn't have was a way to run it. Bailey Hart rebuilt the operating rhythm and the plan finally started."
Elias Thompson
Managing Director at KOKO®
Approach
By the second planning cycle all three markets were working from a shared definition of success for the first time. The duplicated pricing work was consolidated into one experiment run across regions, which produced a usable answer in half the expected time.
Central reporting time fell sharply because the numbers finally reconciled by default. More importantly, the market leads stopped treating the centre as an approval gate and started using the quarterly review to make trade-offs between regions.
Solution
We cut the strategy down to five commitments every market had to hold, and made everything else explicitly local. Pricing method, customer segmentation, and reporting cadence became shared; channel mix, messaging, and hiring pace stayed with the regions.
A single quarterly planning rhythm replaced the annual deck. Each market lead now writes a one-page plan against the same five commitments, and the three plans are reviewed together in the same room rather than approved separately by the centre.