As a manager, especially if you are involved in formulating your company’s strategic plan, I’m sure you have often posed the following question to yourself: “What makes those few companies succeed against the thousands that just exist?” The answer is rather long: staff capabilities, financial strength, resource utilisation …. and the list of factors goes on and on. In fact, you could be doing all of these very well and still just exist.

One of the most important key factors is the way you see your company’s future, in other words, your Strategic Intent. It is the first stage in formulating Strategy. You have to decide whether you are out to Win or just Exist. Depending which one of the two you choose, will define the way you go about formulating and subsequently implementing your strategy.

The diagram above shows the two different approaches. Companies that follow the Exist model, limit their growth to within the capabilities of their resources. On the other hand, companies that follow the Win model, first set their strategic goals that will place them at the top and then look to find or develop the resources needed to support this effort. If they need know-how that they currently lack, they will either train staff up, headhunt people who already have that know-how or acquire a company that has it.

The business world is full of examples. When Toyota decided to set up Lexus, it gave its engineers a seemingly impossible task; build a Mercedes that’s better than a Mercedes, and they did.  Canon set out to beat Xerox in the photocopier market. The Apollo programme was about putting a man on the moon, again an apparently impossible task at the time. All the above statements are expressions of Strategic Intent. These companies managed to create an obsession for winning amongst their staff.

However, the same philosophy also applies to lesser issues. As a manager in the vehicle engineering function of a major European automotive company, it used to take us around 4 years to bring a new engine from concept to market. We set ourselves the Strategic intent of 2½ years. It was difficult, new working methods and technologies had to be invented/implemented but we made it.

Its all about stretching your goals and not allowing yourself to be compromised by current capabilities and resources.

So, what is your company’s Strategic Intent?