ManGO! Games facilitates a strategy session for Yandex

ManGO! Games assisted the Yandex commercial department in elaborating the development strategy for the coming year.

The quality of the annual strategy session determines the team's commitment to achieving its immediate goals. In this regard, ManGO! Games has done its job very well.

Mission. We received a request from Yandex management to facilitate a strategy session. Our direct tasks, in particular, were to develop a scenario and hold the session.

Background. Last year, Yandex already tried to run a strategy session on their own but ended up discovering the disadvantages of autonomous organization. Despite the event being rather time-consuming, the participants still felt like they could have accomplished more.

Oleg Koschinsky, the scenario developer and session facilitator, described Yandex as a very demanding and responsible client who knows its exact business needs.

We chose the World Cafe, a focused informal communication method, to serve as the format for the session. While the line managers acted as "table hosts," the rest of the participants were "guests" who would join the tables to discuss their ideas.

During the session, the participants succeeded in:

• generating 300 valuable ideas.
• selecting 6 high-priority ideas.
• obtaining a template to present the idea.
• identification of advantages, rationales, and milestones for the implementation of each idea.
• forming a transparent, group-wide strategy for the coming year.