Who in the team must participate to ensure the strategy is not shelved?

A brand strategy that is shelved is often not due to poor content. A more common reason is having the wrong people in the room: the executors are not consulted, decision-makers only look at the final slides, and as a result, no one truly feels that the strategy belongs to them. Sinh Vũ sets a hard boundary in the process: the right people must be in the room from the very first meeting.

The mandatory role is present.

There is a simple question to determine who needs to be in the strategy meeting: who has the authority to veto this positioning later? That person must be present from the beginning.

• Founder or final decision-maker. They not only approve but also will defend the positioning in case of internal disputes later. If they do not participate in the process, the strategy will always feel like "the consultant's" rather than "theirs," making it easy to overturn without clear reasons.
• Marketing manager. The person who turns positioning into messaging, content, and campaigns. If they do not co-create the positioning from the start, every subsequent brief carries the risk of going off track.
• Sales manager. The person who uses positioning to persuade customers every day. Without them, positioning often only exists on paper but fails to reach the front lines.
• Product or service manager. The person who verifies whether the positioning is truly supported by the product. This role is often overlooked and is also the reason why brands promise one thing while the product delivers another.

The role of participation in the input phase

Not everyone who holds important information needs to be present throughout the process. Those with field data, specifically customer service staff, research teams, or operations departments, should be interviewed before the workshop to gather input. Keeping them in the room all day often creates two issues: they may hesitate to speak up in front of superiors, or they may steer the session into minor issues instead of strategic questions.

Sinh Vũ often conducts individual interviews with two to three key leaders and frontline representatives in the initial phase, before entering the workshop to finalize positioning.

Common errors regarding participants

A strategy only produces results when it is written for execution, not just for presentation and then shelved. To execute effectively, both the executors and decision-makers must be involved in the process to see themselves in it.

Sinh Vũ internal process perspective, inheriting Keller's POD framework and April Dunford's competitive alternatives.

Avoid the trap of overcrowded meetings

Inviting too many people is the opposite mistake but leads to the same result: nothing gets finalized. When there are too many voices and no one takes final responsibility, the meeting turns into a collective feedback session, and the final positioning becomes a diluted version of many opinions, lacking the sharpness to create differentiation.

Practice principle: only invite those who fall into one of two groups, decision-makers or those who will execute directly. Anyone who does not fall into either group should receive a summary later, no need to attend directly.

Sinh Vũ's viewpoint

Sinh Vũ views participant composition not as a meeting schedule issue but as a process design issue. Sinh Vũ's process begins with interviewing two to three founders and key leaders, and at its fullest, includes a two-day workshop with the leadership team, ensuring that those who will execute co-create the positioning. The goal is not to produce a beautiful document set, but to ensure marketing, sales, and product leave the workshop with a shared understanding of "who we are, who we serve, and why they choose us" without needing to read additional explanatory materials.

Once the right people are in the room, the strategy does not need to be "rolled down" afterward because it has been built by those who will live with it.