Strategy by Design (SxD)
Where strategy usually stalls, we design it into the fabric of daily decisions and team practices.
CULTIVATING INTERNAL EXPERTISE
Too often, strategy lives in presentations and planning cycles but never reaches the day-to-day work of product teams. The result is misalignment, wasted effort, and missed opportunities. Strategy by Design (SxD) closes this gap by giving teams a structured, evidence-led framework that turns vision into tangible choices, shapes priorities, guides execution, and creates measurable impact in the flow of work.
The Strategy by Design Difference
Most strategies never make it into execution. Strategy by Design (SxD) is the missing link. It is an approach that anchors decisions in data, experiments, and real-world outcomes, turning vision into daily practice.
What makes it different
Making strategy practical: We help teams bring vision into their daily work.
Involving all levels: Leaders, managers, and frontline teams co-create from the start.
Connecting the methods: Tools are sequenced into a coherent flow from strategy to execution.
Keeping it alive: Strategy continues through ongoing prioritization and scaling.
Bridging Strategy and Execution
SxD begins by assembling a cross-functional team that represents leadership, middle management, and the frontline. Together they align around business goals, customer value, and development effort. This shared foundation reframes how problems are defined and sustains alignment as strategies move into execution.
The Strategy–Development Loop
At the core of SxD is a continuous loop between strategy and development. Instead of receiving fixed requirements, front-line teams are given problems to solve. Together with strategy, they frame hypotheses to test and return insights that reshape the work. This shift builds a culture of learning rather than delivery, breaking the old top-down hierarchy and creating a loop that accelerates and compounds improvements over time.
How we deliver Strategy by Design
We bring SxD to life through tailored training formats that embed the framework into your team’s daily work.
Immersive Team Workshops: Facilitated sessions where teams practice SxD methods on their own strategic challenges and learn design-led ways of working.
On-the-Job Mentorship: Direct support inside live projects, with guidance as teams apply the SxD framework in their daily work.
Tailored Training: Customized programs that address an organization’s specific barriers to connecting strategy and execution.
Methods That Bring SxD to Life
Strategy by Design is a living framework, continuously refined through decades of practice. Many of the methods build on proven techniques, but have been adapted for real-world conditions and impact. Some are deliberately simple and fast to apply, while others are more advanced and deliver transformative results. Together they form a coherent system for bridging strategy and execution.
Strategy frames the right problems and gives teams challenges rather than solutions. Development applies the strategy, tests hypotheses, and returns insights that refine the work. Foundations such as psychological safety and middle-management enablement make the system sustainable.
Example Methods
Framestorming
Too often, teams are handed problems by senior leaders and nobody questions whether they are the right problems. Yet this is where the greatest improvements can be made. Framestorming is a lightweight exercise that helps teams step back, clarify the problem in terms of impact and effort, and reframe it before committing to solutions. In under an hour, teams gain sharper alignment and uncover opportunities that would otherwise be missed.
SxD Prioritization
In many teams, what gets built is determined by the loudest voice or the highest-paid person. This leads to endless debates, shifting backlogs, and frustrated developers. SxD Prioritization replaces subjective debate with an objective process that weighs business goals, customer value, and development effort. By focusing on the big picture, teams can make clear, confident decisions about where to invest. The result is higher impact and stronger motivation.
OKR Stories
Many organizations experiment with OKRs but few achieve lasting success. What is often missing is a clear purpose that makes objectives relevant and relatable. OKR Stories solve this by integrating the product narrative process into the creation of objectives. Teams co-create OKRs that tell a story they can connect to, rather than inheriting abstract targets from above. This makes objectives meaningful and increases the likelihood that they will be followed.
How Adoption Works
We do not expect teams to adopt every method at once. Instead, we begin with an analysis of current practices and create a tailored roadmap. This often means starting small with quick wins that prove value and build confidence. From there, the scope can grow as teams see impact and are ready for more advanced methods. For some organizations, a single method may be enough to unlock change. For others, structured change management enables a broader transformation.
Proof of Experience
These methods have been shaped through decades of consulting with corporations and through leadership in UX Design at Nordea Business Banking and Dräger Medical Devices. In these roles, I not only led design work but also helped develop product strategy methods for key products. Each context provided lessons about what works in real-world conditions, which are now distilled into the Strategy by Design framework.
Our Vision
Our goal is not simply to teach methods. It is to help organizations build a culture where strategy lives in daily work, supported by alignment, learning, and continuous improvement.
In Collaboration with Lomi Agency
The Strategy by Design (SxD) Framework is the product of our collaboration with Lomi Agency, an Oslo-based consultancy that bridges the gap between strategy and execution. Together, we have created a structured approach that enables organizations to turn vision into daily practice, aligning teams, clarifying priorities, and accelerating innovation outcomes.
Our work draws on the deep industry experience of Hallgrim Sagen, co-founder of Lomi. With over 20 years of international leadership in the technology industry, Hallgrim contributed to scaling Tandberg into a global success and later held senior roles at Cisco, where he helped shape the company’s telepresence and collaboration business. His track record of building high-impact design teams and driving strategic change ensures that the framework combines visionary thinking with proven industry expertise.
