The term “sprint” has been widely adopted in corporate jargon. Teams talk about strategy sprints, design sprints, innovation sprints. But behind the buzzword, many organisations miss the real point: a sprint is not just a fast workshop; it is a carefully designed experience.
At Konectica, we have seen companies treat sprints as events to generate excitement —a flurry of post-its, a couple of brainstorming sessions, a demo at the end. That’s not a sprint; that’s theatre. A true strategic sprint requires structure, discipline, and design.
We saw this difference clearly in a multinational FMCG company. They had run “sprints” before, which felt more like chaotic hackathons. Energy was high, but outcomes were thin. When they invited us to facilitate, we reframed the entire process.
The sprint began not in the workshop room but weeks earlier. We worked with leadership to frame the challenge sharply: not “improve customer experience” but “reduce customer onboarding time by 40% in six months.” That clarity acted as the north star.
Then came the design of the journey. Each day was carefully planned: divergence when new ideas were needed, convergence when decisions had to be made. Each exercise wasn’t random; it was chosen for its ability to unlock a specific kind of thinking. And every artefact produced during the sprint —maps, canvases, prototypes— was linked directly to the decision-making process of the organisation.
The outcome? In five days, the team moved from abstract frustration to a concrete prototype tested with real customers. More importantly, they didn’t just “generate ideas”; they committed to decisions. The sprint had not been a playground, but a laboratory where strategy was accelerated.
This is the essence of a Konectica sprint: it looks dynamic and creative on the surface, but underneath it is rigorously designed. Speed without design is chaos. Design without speed is inertia. The power is in combining both.
👉 So the question for any leader isn’t “Can we run a sprint?” but: “Are we ready to design a sprint that actually moves the business forward?”