How We Built a Moat in 30 Minutes
At our recent offsite, I introduced a new exercise called Moat-Building.
The goal was simple: to help the team explore what makes Springbach unique and how we can use that to make a greater impact for the organizations we serve.
We started with two short but powerful stories I borrowed (with thanks!) from Rochelle O’Brien at Venture Opportunities’ newsletter BizDealmaker.com. Both explored how ordinary companies built extraordinary moats—not through scale, but through insight.
One story was about a company that sold wire. The product itself was a commodity, but the founder reimagined how it was delivered with color-coding, smarter packaging, and a patented system that turned a commodity into a category leader.
The other was about a small tech firm that beat billion-dollar competitors by going narrower and serving just one customer segment with precision and depth.
Two stories. Two paths to building a moat by:
Reimagining the experience.
Going deep on one problem and owning it.
The Process
Instead of summarizing the stories, I asked everyone to take five minutes to read them silently. Because the magic isn’t in the storytelling, it’s in the reflection.
Then I gave the team a few prompts to spark creative thinking:
Where are our clients experiencing friction? (Where can we make their lives easier like in the examples provided?)
What do we uniquely understand about our clients’ world that others don’t?
Where could we double down — one problem, one segment, one offer — that would make us indispensable?
Each team captured their ideas on sticky notes. Within 30 minutes, we had filled a wall with insights about flow, delivery, and independence, and recognized that our moat isn’t about size or scope, but about seeing patterns across clients and applying processes to fit each situation. Because we’ve seen these patterns before, we can customize solutions to what’s unfolding in real time for each client.
The Results
The conversation that followed was energizing. We surfaced friction points that deserve attention, saw patterns across clients, and named the real source of our differentiation: context, connection, and continuous improvement.
At Springbach, our moat isn’t about scale or speed, it’s about the depth of understanding that comes from living in our clients’ world day after day. Because we’re embedded for the long term, we see what’s happening across teams and over time, spotting the patterns others miss. That perspective lets us anticipate challenges, connect dots across organizations, and continuously adapt our ways of working to what’s unfolding in real time.
For example, the team reflected on how our ongoing work with clients often reveals bottlenecks before they become blockers. We’re able to recognize familiar friction, tailor solutions to fit each client’s culture, and strengthen delivery systems with every engagement.
The result? A team that doesn’t just consult, but partners using context to guide decisions, connection to build trust, and continuous improvement to drive measurable impact.
More than that, the team left with shared language to describe what makes us different and renewed pride in the moat we’ve built together.
Why You Should Try It
If you lead a team, whether it’s five people or fifty, I’d encourage you to run your own version of a Moat-Building session.
You don’t need slides or consultants. Just:
Bring an inspiring example or two (thank you again, Rochelle).
Ask your team to read, reflect, and respond.
Give them space to talk about what makes your company truly irreplaceable.
You might be surprised by what you uncover.
In short: building a moat isn’t about protecting what you have, it’s about rediscovering what makes you worth protecting.