Defining and Evaluating the Concept of Strategic Intent

Defining and Evaluating the Concept of Strategic Intent Strategic Intent is one of the revolutionary concepts in the field of Strategic Management, which has brought major changes in the functioning style of every organization and is responsible for many breakthroughs. It refers to the obsession that organizations usually term as win it all even though the aspirations out-proportion the resources and capabilities. This concept has in past made many organizations way more successful than the one in past with same amount of resources and capacity. Now as competition gets global and tougher it is of utmost importance that companies not only understand this revolutionary concept but also instil practices within the organization that makes the Goal look always in reach. This article tells in detail what Strategic Intent is and how it can be implemented in an organization. Keywords: Strategic Intent; Obsession; Planning, Imitation INTRODUCTION Strategic Intent refers to a high level statement of the means by which an organisation achieves its VISION. Today Managers in different organisations are working hard to match the competitive advantage of their global rivals but in order to do the same most of them end up only imitating what their competitors have already implemented. Imitation doesnt really create the Strategic Intent as competitors have already mastered those techniques and have exploited the first mover advantage. Hence mere imitation doesnt lead to competitive revitalization. Strategic Intent drives organisations, individuals and groups to meet the challenge of change in business today. Companies that have become global leaders in past 20 years had ambitions that were out of proportion to their resources and capabilities but they had created and obsession to win it all and this obsession is what may be termed as Strategic Intent. Strategic intent captures the essence of winning, is stable over time, and sets goals that deserve personal effort and commitment. At the same time Strategic Intent has a lot more in it than just an obsession to win it all because there have been companies in past which had an ambitious Strategic Intent but failed to achieve the desired goals. Success finds its beginning in purpose, so its important to clarify ones purpose or intention and then to find out the action in accordance with the intentions. This helps creating the results one wants. Strategic Intent draws on a number of disciplines to personalise the way forward that works for the organisation. Background Strategic Intent as a concept was born in Post-World war II Japan when it dramatically emerged as world leader in economy. Japanese Organizations had set goals for themselves that might have been considered by most of the Western Organizations of that time as highly unrealistic. But with very few resources and highly committed workforce Japan was then able to lay the foundation for 10-15 years of leadership in terms of economy. From Japan only world learnt how to outperform everyone else even when resources are few and challenges aspirations huge. Strategic Intent is not Strategic Planning Mostly people confuse Strategic Intent with Strategic Planning which are in fact poles apart. Strategic Planning may cause competitive decline if not backed with Strategic Intent. Strategic Planning is limited by the availability of resources and capacity and looks for feasibility and viability but on the other hand Strategic Intent focuses on the end and means are left to be flexible. If one does a deep study it becomes clearly evident that Strategic Intent is a long term concept driven by Corporate Challenges as a middle term concept, which in turn is carried forward by Competitive Innovation in short term. Hence at the most basic ground level Strategic Intent is based on the Competitive Innovation to be carried out necessarily. Classification of Strategic Intent If we have to broadly divide Strategic Intent into subdivisions then we may classify it into three parts, namely, Stretch, Leverage and Fit. Stretch stresses on the basic definition of Strategic Intent as to stretch the resources and capabilities to the extent that achievement of end is ensured. Here the basic stands the same as we have discussed since the start that there is always a misfit between the resources and aspirations but equating this out-proportioned equation is what refers to the Stretch. Second is Leverage, which refers to the scenario where resources are leveraged by accelerating the pace of organization learning so as to attain impossible goals. Here key success factors are may, namely, Concentration, Accumulation, Complementing and Conservation and Recovering. And Third is Fit which refers to the case where ideally resources have been made available in such a manner so that high level of Aspirations may still be easily achieved with help of resources available. Attributes of Strategic Intent There are three major attributes of Strategic Intent, namely Sense of Direction, Sense of Discovery and Sense of Destiny. Here the first attribute, Sense of Direction, refers to the Long-Term Market or Competitive Position. For instance, we may consider the case of Canon and Xerox, which are rival organization in the photocopier field for decades now. If we talk of Canon, its long term competitive position, put in simple terms, should be Beat Xerox . Second attribute which is the Sense of Discovery refers to the competitively unique point of view about future. It says that Strategic Intent is differentiated because here in this case the employees are affiliated and they are convinced about the concept of Strategic Intent. For instance, employees of a company are taught about the concept and they are in a position to promise higher personal and professional goals to themselves. Last but not the least attribute is the Sense of Destiny refers to the emotional edge that is involved with the Strategic Intent. This takes Strategic Intent to an all-together new level by including the employees emotions with the organization aspirations. This leads to an all over harmonic progress for everyone. Theories of Strategic Intent Strategic Intent may also be defined as a compelling statement about what you are doing and where you are going. As discussed earlier its really more than a statement; it becomes a core element in the motivational DNA of the organization or individual. Strategic Intent answers the question: What exactly are we trying to accomplish? Yet Strategic Intent is not enough by itself and here is the twist in the entire story. There must be commitment and cooperation. Excellent leaders recognize there are different Styles in their organization. Think of these styles: Forceful, Cooperative, High Structure, Command and Control, High Energy body contact right out of the mosh pit. How can these significantly different styles work together? This is the question that has to be answered by most of the organizations for effective implementation of Strategic Intent. It is important to create an understanding of both, self and others. What does Strategic Intent do Strategic intent encompasses the essence of winning, is highly stable over time, and sets targets that deserve personal effort commitment. It is a vision that explains the desired leadership position of a firm and grounds the goals by which success can be assessed. Moreover, it takes an active management to focus organizational attention at every level in the firm on the essence of achieving the goal. Employees in a firm which are grounded in strategic intent have the same mission of beating the competition, being the best, being the market leader, etc. Strategic intent accomplishes this by setting objectives that require personal efforts throughout the organization and produce a team-commitment to targeted objectives. Strategic intent should be constant over time, should provide short term stability to focus on actions, while allowing longer range of flexibility to take advantage of newer opportunities without sacrificing the strategic intent itself. Managing the Corporate Challenges As discussed earlier, implementing strategic intent needs a firm to stretch capabilities and resources to meet and win corporate challenges. A firm sets its strategic intent to be a market leader soon finds it does not have the resources or capabilities or the capacity to meet its objective. Hence the organization is required to increase learning, to build new advantages, and to become more innovative in the utilization of resources so as to compete against current market leaders and become one in due course. Corporate challenges then stretch the organization to realise and analyse competition and understand their industrys evolution. Such analysis leads to competitive openings and identifies the competitive advantages that are needed for ultimate success. How to Implement Strategic Intent It is a three step process where the first step starts with setting the strategic intent which aims at setting all the three attributes discussed earlier, namely, direction, discovery and destiny, right. This refers to having clarity of what actually the organization intends to be in all respects. Second step is to set the challenges which should be appropriate and communicated to everyone in the organization effectively. For instance, Canon, in order to beat Xerox, had set a challenge as to come up with a Home Copier which is priced at $ 1000. Third and final step is the empowerment of Strategic Intent and here the key is to involve everyone. Downward and upward communication of ideas should be free-flow and everyones opinion should be given considerable importance. Here the term empowerment is used in a vary holistic manner so as to encompass both individuals and organization. Conclusion The crux of entire report is that top management must involve all levels of the organization in acquiring global competitiveness. Managers must have a belief in their capability to succeed in gaining the strategic intent by ensuring consistency in vision up and down the organization. Managers should motivate the organization, should focus attention long enough to vitalize new capabilities, and should have confidence in their own abilities to involve the entire organization in the revitalization versus an incremental change strategy. It is only when the entire organization is involved committed to success can the organization become a global leader. Quatations: Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad defined Strategic Intent as an ambitious and compelling dream that energises and that provides the emotional and intellectual energy for the journey to the fuuture

First Ice Story

â€Å"Ok I'll pick you up at nine† â€Å"Thanks see ya later† As she hangs up the phone her mother lightly taps on the door to her room. She strolls in with a mixed look of worry and annoyance on her face. She takes an almighty breath waiting for the inevitable argument she is about to have with her mother. â€Å"Ok I'll pick you up at nine† â€Å"Thanks see ya later† As David puts the phone down he feels a small drop of sweat trickle down the side of his face. He decides to open the window and as he does so a numbing blast of freezing winter air thrusts through the open window. Whilst David is checking the local cinema listings for a film that he and Louise can watch, the first snow flake of winter falls to the ground outside the house nestling on a fallen leaf instantly melting and running onto a small spider that is hiding from the cold trying to keep warm. The room lights up suddenly from the TV set, the curtains drawn, and the cat fed and watered, Louise locks the door and continues down her garden path. Suddenly Louise slips on an unforeseen ice patch, snapping on of the heels of her shoe, she knew wearing high heels was going to be a bad choice! David climbed into his car and turned the heaters on so that when Louise got in it would be nice and warm. This was David's first car, a Ford Escort and it was his pride and joy, his baby that he looked after and cared for as if it had it owns life. Louise walks down the slippery side path and ahead of her she notices a small group of boys, no older than 14 or 15, she thinks shall I go another way? But decides she will be fine. As she approaches them one boy notices her walking their way and alerts his mates to her presence. As she gets closer she realises they were much older than she first thought. At about 6ft tall a piece the boys began to spread out as she got closer. Being polite Louise says thank you ands walks by but she feels a sudden grab of her arm and a freezing shock shoots all over her body. David tears down the country lanes heading for Louise, although he doesn't know what was happening to her, he can almost feel that all is not right. Not far now until he is with Louise, the speedometer increasing rapidly. What he doesn't notice is the police car slowly catching up with him, sirens blaring until David quickly checks his mirrors and notices the blue flashing light. Two things go through his mind, â€Å"Do I stop?† Or â€Å"Do I get to Louise and face the consequences later?† Unfortunately he chooses to wrong thought as he sped up to 75mph in a 30 mph zone. The inevitable happens. David collides with a parked car as he flies round a blind corner, he dies on impact. Louise struggles away from the group of boys and runs as fast as she can, aware of an ambulance screeching past her. Louise could hear the muffled sound of the ambulance radio and hears the words David and Ford Escort. She panics and gets her mobile out to call him, but her phone is dead. Heart racing she runs down the street to the nearest phone box puts the money in, dials the number only to have a man answer the phone. The man explains he is a police officer and David was involved in a fatal car accident. Her face turns as pale as a ghost, her hands a cold as ice and her legs turn to jelly as she replaces the receiver. She falls to floor huddles up in the corner of the phone booth sobbing and wondering what she has done to deserve this pain she was now suffering.

Purpose of Life, Modern Changes, and Human Isolation Essay

An especially confusing irony arising from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is that one of history’s more well-received and lauded plays is at the same time accorded so many diverse interpretations that understanding frequently seems elusive. The academic and critical literature clearly illustrates how the play has been debated. Exact thematic elements and even the playwright’s precise motivations have proven difficult to derive from the narrative’s textual structure. These interpretive nuances and proffered variations have been rendered even more suspect because Samuel Beckett offered evasive replies whenever he was queried about the intended function of certain characters or his personal intentions regarding any particular passage. These realities are not offered to argue that particular thematic features are incapable of determination, as familiar types of themes and thematic elements can be fairly well-established to a certain extant, but simply to point out and to acknowledge as a theoretical point of departure that Waiting for Godot is a broadly conceived type of narrative that touches upon many themes rather than being narrowly constrained to a particular theme. An examination of certain secondary scholarly analyses unequivocally illustrates the breadth of academic interpretations arguing that Beckett’s play addresses themes such as the meaning of God, the quest for individual salvation, the resistance of the French people against Germany’s occupation during World War Two, how human beings ought to live their lives in changing times, the fleeting nature of time, and the new circumstances that human beings had to adapt to in a post-World War Two era emerging from the Industrial Revolution. To be sure, with so many different interpretations supported by references to certain passages of the play’s text and relevant historical factors, it might seem highly unlikely to persuasively support a dominant or fundamental theme. A critical and comprehensive review of the textual evidence, on the other hand, does eventually suggest that there does exist a primary theme. This dominant theme in Waiting for Godot is that human beings can never truly understand the world in which they exist or how individuals are to be best integrated into a world with contradictory messages and imperfect information. Such a thesis can function to harmonize the different interpretations offered by secondary sources by showing how the main characters’ dialogue in different circumstances consistently illustrates and reinforces the human search for a definite purpose and a rational meaning in an external environment that persistently appears hopelessly incomprehensible. A Unifying Theme: Transcending Particular Interpretations To begin, addressing secondary theories before turning to the play’s actual text, it is necessary to demonstrate how academic and critical commentary has created more confusion than understanding by concentrating too narrowly from a thematic point of view. This type of analytical framework is necessary because virtually all of these at times conflicting and contradictory interpretations are capable of harmonization to a large extant if the play’s primary theme is posited as the individual human being’s desire to better understand and comprehend the function of the human animal in an incomprehensible external environment. It is superficially agreed, for example, that Beckett frequently utilizes universal themes in the narrative; in this respect, one secondary source argues that, â€Å"Waiting for Godot, in many ways, simply extends those uncertainties: Why are we here? Are we alone in an uncaring universe, or not? What are we to do while we are here? How can we know? And, ultimately, what does it matter? †(Hutchings x). This focus on universal concerns in the key to understanding the play and identifying the fundamental theme; indeed, these universal types of characterizations function in the larger picture to transcend more limited and narrow types of interpretations.

A.M.Holmes Music For Torching, Seth MacFarlanes Family...

A.M.Holmes Music For Torching, Seth MacFarlanes Family Guy, and Tony Kushners Angels in America The social progression of America in the 20th and 21st centuries has been arguably advantageous. In the years following the feminist and civil rights movements, the United States has undeniably developed into the world’s leading democratic system. Women and minorities have equal citizenship status under the law. There are more females in the workforce than ever before, and formerly guarded issues such as homosexuality and domestic problems can now be addressed openly in social and political forums. However, the question remains as to whether or not such progression has benefited American culture and its population as a whole. Perhaps we†¦show more content†¦References to primarily American popular culture and literature create a discourse investigating the merits of our nation’s development. Each text employs comedy at Sigmund Freud’s tendentious level of jest to challenge personal and social reticence without appearing antagonistic to any specific group . The use of intertexuality condenses the length of the works and lends to the humor of the subject matter by alluding to already familiar people, places, and events in American culture. Without prior knowledge of such entities, most of the texts’ meaning and wit will be lost. Nevertheless, a complete understanding of such allusions will reveal the juxtaposition of America’s modern progression: society has improved in certain aspects, yet has somewhat been demoted in other regards. The long-established attraction of migrating to America is derived from its historic reputation as the land of opportunity. The Statue of Liberty symbolizes the ability of the wretched refuse to surpass birth and class distinctions through hard work and economy. But the overwhelming importance placed on possessions as status symbols has gradually lost its allure. In Music For Torching, A.M. Homes reveals that the contemporary world of suburbia, viewed as the culmination of financially successful households, is not as wonderful as it is presumed to be. Her constant citation of designer labels reveals the importance placed on