COMPETITIVE INNOVATION WITH STRATEGIC INTENT

You can gain significant competitive innovation through leveraging new opportunities with strategic intent. Shared through-out all levels of an organization, and sustained over 15 – 20 years, strategic intent is the collective will to achieve inspirational stretch targets.

How is strategic intent different from a vision or a plan?

A vision statement describes a picture. Strategic intent names a target you can measure and a win you can call. A strategic plan sets this year's steps. Strategic intent sets the finish line, and each year's plan changes to chase it. Try it on your own goal. Can you measure it? Can you say the day you will know you won? If not, you have a vision, and the team has nothing to chase. Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad named the idea in Harvard Business Review.

EXPLORING COMPETETIVE INNOVATION THROUGH STRATEGIC INTENT AT KOMATSU

Just how much gain can be achieved through competitive innovation? Let’s dial back to Japan in 1970 – struggling with lower basic resources, smaller manufacturing numbers, and lagging both Europe and the US in technology. Komatsu, at 35% the size of Caterpillar, boasted a product line of small bulldozers with limited distribution.

KOMATSU’S ENCIRCLE CATARPILLAR

Komatsu’s bold strategic intent to “encircle Caterpillar” (Hamel & Prahalad, 1985, p. 148), unleashed a competitive innovation storm. Komatsu set that 20-year intention when it had a small engine, limited international exposure. Fast forward to 1985, Komatsu = a $2.5B company in large earth moving equipment, semi-conductors, and industrial robots. Today Komatsu regularly eats Caterpillar’s lunch.

HOW CAN YOU LEVERAGE STRATEGIC INTENT TO ACHIEVE COMPETITIVE INNOVATION?

Your strategic intent target must meet the high-bar of being worthy for everyone to invest personal best-efforts. It must be impeccably communicated; it must have enough emotional punch to be sustained over a generation. 2 key ingredients are necessary to gain competitive innovation through strategic intent: 1. A criteria based & specific leadership goal. 2. Be tightly managed by deft process management. That process is where the intent turns into weekly work. Here is how to implement strategy so teams carry it out.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIC INTENT

Being less prescriptive means you can take advantage of opportunities that you can’t know about, or cannot anticipate at the beginning of the year.

BUILDING LONG-TERM VALUE

Strategic intent takes you out of the myopic focus of the next month / quarter / year and into longer-term goals. Your team begins thinking more creatively about how to build long-term value that truly aligns to your strategic intent. Can you say this is true today?

ANTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONAL INVESTMENTS

Strategic intent encourages you to planfully invest in you and invest in your business. Deploy resources today to learn new skills, build additional capabilities, and to grow necessary bench strength for scale with thoughtful appreciation of reaping rewards that may take several years to evolve. Foundation building ensures it is there to soar from when you / your firm is at that level.

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO BEGIN CRAFTING A WINNING STRATEGIC INTENT?

Start now! Establish your compelling 2030 – 3035 strategic intents. Ask yourself ‘what do I want to be true about my organization in 15 – 20 years?’ Here at Learn2, our goal is to change how the world learns. It is the filter we use for every decision we make and inspires each of us to drive competitive innovation!

ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS IN STRATEGIC PLANNING

If the goals of your organization are personal, what are the outcomes you seek from your contributions? At Learn2, we’re interested in leaving a legacy and having a positive impact. Our personal strategic intent? We want to change how we lead our organizations and what we collectively define as great leadership. When we consider decisions from our strategic intent, we are open to emergent / fluid opportunities that present themselves vs being overly prescriptive of the activities that will deliver either legacy or impact. To stay open to those chances and still hit the year, see how we approach strategic planning.

Turn Your Strategic Intent Into Action

Most strategic intents die in the slide deck. Leaders nod, then go back to this quarter's numbers. Lead the Endurance puts your top team inside Shackleton's fight to survive, so they feel what one shared goal demands. Then they map your strategic intent to their own teams' work. See how Lead the Endurance works Not sure this fits? Find your starting point. ~ Dr. Gail Johnson Morris