Curating space: Putting strategy into floor plans
How could the physical spaces of branch locations be redesigned to reflect a bank’s overall strategy? For Planet Strategy Lab invited club member Michel Schibler and his colleague Alexandra Dumitras to walk our club community through their case at the intersection of strategy and space. The evening's discussions over dinner inspired reflections we want to share here.
Visualisations drive participative strategy work
Imagine your company values both the efficiency gains of digitalised processes as well as the relationship-building of analogue, face-to-face interactions with customers. This is a strategic tension many businesses face today as they navigate retaining customer trust and loyalty in spaces that bridge the physical and digital.
If we want to both realise efficiency gains as well as building trust and loyalty, we need to accompany customers every step of the way. A floor plan does this: it encodes assumptions about who your customer is, what kind of interactions they value, and what you're optimising for.
These visualised assumptions in floor plans, customer journeys, and interior design sketches help make strategy work participative. They give people something to react to, argue with, and build on together – turning abstract intentions into concrete, shared decisions.
Curating space: translating strategy into physical locations
This connects to something we believe at FPSL: strategy is not just the finished result, but the often meandering sensemaking process along the way. In banking, this is playing out in real time. Branch offices compete with fully digital neo-banks, raising the question: what is a physical location actually still for? Can we curate spaces that build customer trust and loyalty?
We think this highlights the importance of curating: a good curator doesn’t just fill spaces with a selection of objects. Instead, they translate a broader conversation into a curated exhibition that makes that conversation accessible to others.
It’s the same when designing physical spaces for companies: the challenge is to curate a space – a service point, a branch, even a website – that links strategic intent with real-world experiences.
So – can a floor plan be strategic?
It depends. If you read a floor plan as an instruction manual on where to put chairs and tables, it’s not. But if you use it as an artefact to explore core strategic tensions like the value you place on efficiency versus face-to-face interactions, trust versus throughput, automation versus service –then yes.
In that case the floor plan becomes a tool for reflection, sensemaking – and ultimately, strategic decision-making.
We thank Michel and Alexandra for sharing this case and enriching our collective sensemaking. If you have a question, insight, or story you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you.
