Polle de Maagt 
Polle de Maagt
Story.
In September 2016, I was visiting Creative Dock in Prague. A team was brainstorming with enormous enthusiasm and seriousness.
During a break, I asked one of them what they were doing.
“We’re trying to kill our own company,” he said.
They were doing an exercise called Try to kill us. It looked like something they did regularly, not a one-off.
How to run it.
The outline below is how I run it, using the competitor perspective of Lisa Bodell’s Kill the Company. I have not verified whether Creative Dock’s exercise was based on her method.
Invitation.
“You are a competitor with the resources to take us on. How would you put us out of business? Which weaknesses would you exploit?”
Make it clear that this is about challenging the business, not attacking colleagues. Do not defend existing decisions or jump to solutions yet.
How space is arranged and materials needed.
Each group gets sticky notes or a shared digital board. One specific threat per note. Keep a separate area for responses, so identifying weaknesses and fixing them do not mix.
How participation is distributed.
Start with a few minutes of individual thinking. Let everyone share before discussing. Ask for concrete attacks rather than vague statements such as “we need to innovate.”
How groups are configured.
Groups of 3 to 4. Mix functions and perspectives. Each group plays a competitor attacking the same company.
Sequence of steps and time allocation.
- Set the target, 5 minutes. Agree on the company or business unit and what being put out of business would mean.
- Find ways to beat it, 10 to 15 minutes. Think alone, then share in your group. What would a competitor offer, remove or do differently to make customers choose them?
- Make the threats specific, 10 minutes. Describe how each attack would work and which weakness it exploits. Stay with the threats before proposing fixes.
- Compare and prioritise, 10 to 15 minutes. Bring the groups together. Cluster similar threats. Which could do the most damage, and which weaknesses can you realistically address?
- Turn threats into action, 10 to 15 minutes. Choose a small number of responses. For each, a concrete next step, an owner and a review date. Do not end with only a wall of threats.
Related exercises.
Sabotaging colleagues asks how to make colleagues’ lives miserable. Sabotaging customers asks how to make sure customers never return. Try to kill us starts with the company itself.
For the idea of reversing a question, read The CIA guide to sabotaging companies.
Variations.
- Narrow the target to one product, service or business unit if the whole company is too broad. Keep the competitor perspective and end with decisions about what to change.
At your next discussion about the company’s future, ask: “How would we kill our own company?” Write down the answers before moving to solutions.
My visit to Creative Dock in Prague, September 2016. Related method: Lisa Bodell / FutureThink, Kill the Company, also in Knowledge at Wharton (2012).
