4 Ways to Flip the Script

All to often the teach­ing of busi­ness mod­els and prac­tices is not only stiff but also overly aca­d­e­mic. In other words its full of a aca­d­e­mic phrase­ol­ogy while seem­ingly irrel­e­vant to the typ­i­cal day-to-day bat­tle. Well I’m set on not only chang­ing that but also debunk­ing the ver­biage and pro­vid­ing use­able frameworks.

In the first parts of this series on mod­els used to iden­tify com­pet­i­tive advan­tages we explored the Five Forces Model and an alter­na­tive frame­work the Flag­ship Model, both of which are great at pro­vid­ing a snap­shot of the cur­rent situation.

I thought it would be inter­est­ing to explore a frame­work, Strate­gic Intent, that one can use use to only under­stand but also tilt the play­ing field in their favor. What it comes down to it that you can either be a fol­lower — fully dri­ven by exter­nal actions — or game changer who can manip­u­late, and on rare occa­sions ini­ti­ate, the com­pet­i­tive forces that even­tual dic­tate the eco­nomic gains.

Think of it this way. Dur­ing any com­pet­i­tive event — ten­nis, foot­ball, car rac­ing — actions are exploited to play into a strength or exploit a competitor’s weak­ness. Why is Ser­ena Williams so dom­i­nate in ten­nis? It’s because oth­ers don’t matchup across the board with her speed, agility, and strength. Where they fall short is the point of attack. This poten­tial breach area can come to light dur­ing the event but more often than not is iden­ti­fied by observ­ing past per­for­mances well before she hits the court. Hours of research and game plan­ning are invested to develop a win­ning playbook.

Strate­gic Intent — the empha­sis is on intent — grows out of this same ambi­tion and obses­sion with achiev­ing an objec­tive, be it win­ning or secur­ing a cer­tain level of suc­cess. The frame­work is based on the prin­ci­ples of W.E. Dem­ing. The essence of Deming’s think­ing is that one must cre­ate tomorrow’s advan­tages faster than your cur­rent ones are mim­ic­ked or leapfrogged. Think con­tin­u­ous improvement.

I hap­pened to have been in an Apple store ear­lier today — yes I’m a Mac shop — and was reminded of this fact not by their line of com­put­ers or phones but by how fast they are will­ing to can­ni­bal­ize their soft­ware. Every year there is a new major ver­sion with the high­lighted changes often based on the public’s per­cep­tion of a competitor’s weak­ness. By posi­tion­ing your­self away from com­peti­tors you not only enhance your rev­enue model but also share­holder value.

When study­ing the frame­work there are four ele­ments that one ana­lyzes and then rearranges to fine tune busi­ness operations.

• build­ing lay­ers of advantage
• search­ing for loose bricks
• chang­ing the rules of engagement
• col­lab­o­rat­ing

Lay­ers of Advan­tage Crit­i­cally eval­u­ate other areas in which you can improve. Look along the value chain to con­tin­u­ously place addi­tional hur­dles. World class track stars do the same by:

• work­ing with their shoe com­pany to pro­duce a prod­uct (process machin­ery) that has the ideal fit, flex­i­bil­ity, and traction
• Employ top notch nutri­tion­ist to develop a cus­tomized meal plan (sys­tem input).
• .…, you get the concept.

Loose Bricks Build mar­ket share and rep­u­ta­tion where they are not (geo­graphic or prod­uct) play in the voids. So you might be just shy of the world class ranks in sprint­ing but you could become the top pusher in bobsleding.

Chang­ing the Rules Don’t fol­low the leader’s rules or struc­ture. Cre­ate what works best with your strengths. If one isn’t able to do this todays NFL games would still be pre­dom­i­nately based on the straight ahead run and bas­ket­ball wouldn’t have the hard charg­ing, high-flying fast break.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing Use know-how devel­oped by oth­ers. Acquire and give credit. The best of teams, and after all if you are involved in run­ning a busi­ness you are part of a team, look out­ward for inspi­ra­tion, knowl­edge, and joint suc­cess. By and far part­ner­ship devel­op­ment is a path that we can all take. Look to your cham­pi­ons, cus­tomers, and sup­pli­ers to see how you can col­lec­tively excel.

“There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great play­ers and never win titles. Most of the time, those play­ers aren’t will­ing to sac­ri­fice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwill­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice only makes indi­vid­ual goals more dif­fi­cult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the indi­vid­ual acco­lades will take care of them­selves.” — Michael Jordan