© 2015 Next Level Up. All rights reserved.

The Five Elements of Strategic Intent

What you need to achieve strategic intent - read on to learn the elements of

strategic intent.

There are five key steps to strategic intent. Strategic positioning is about what kind of business you want it to be. Strategic differentiation asks the question of how it will stand out as better than its competition. The business model answers the question about how it’s going to do what it has to do and make a profit. The personality is about what kind of team we need to do this with. What are your values? What are the values you want in your team? What’s important? What’s right? What’s wrong? And then, of course, goals because when you’ve succeeded, you have to be able to measure it. Let’s take a look first at Strategic Positioning which answers the question, what kind of business do you want it to be? Ask yourself the following key questions:

What are the most important facts?

What is the name of your business?

What is the product or service you will offer?

Who will be your general target market?

What are any other important characteristics, such as pricing, quality, customer service, etc.?

© 2015 Next Level Up. All rights reserved.

Next up we have Strategic Differentiation. This is where you ask yourself, how will your business stand out as better than its competition? Questions to ask yourself:

How will your business be better?

What will set it apart in the eyes of your customers? (service, prices, products, location, customer service, efficiency, etc.?)

Next, The Business Model tells how it’s going to work. This is an overview. It doesn’t have to be hugely detailed, but it does have to be clear. The question here is, how will your business operate in order to make a profit? So, if a potential investor or bank manager asks you how your business works, you would list out the elements of your Business Model. For instance:

Key offerings

Marketing

Customer experience

Pricing

Partnerships and alliances

Staff morale and teamwork

Systemisation

Growth

The next element is the Business Personality. What kind of team will you need to do it? You have your standards and values and you want to employ people who have similar standards and values because they’ll get it. They will get what’s right.

© 2015 Next Level Up. All rights reserved.

The make-up of a business personality:

Values: what’s right, what’s wrong, acceptable, important, unimportant

Norms: normal and acceptable behavior

Beliefs: what is accepted as true and desirable

Attitudes: mindset and feelings about matters of importance

After you’ve come up with your business personality, you need to look at your business goals. You have to measure your progress toward your strategic intent and how you’re going to know that you’ve succeeded and when is that going to be. Most goals can be measured directly, such as revenue, profit, number of sales, staff numbers, growth, and so on. However, there are some that can’t be measured directly like customer satisfaction, reputation, or work ethic. Goal setting is a mixture. It’s a bit of an art and a bit of science. The right goals, the right number of goals, can and should keep you on the path to success and keep you motivated. The wrong goals, or no goals, can lead you astray. Here’s an acronym that you may have seen before. We think of this as short for strategic which will help you set effective goals by reminding you what a goal should be.

STRAT helps you answer these questions: How will you know you have succeeded? When will that be? Significant - important indicator of successful achievement of strategic intent Time-Specific - set a time frame for achieving the goal Realistic, but challenging - goals that are difficult, but reachable

Actionable and focused - focus on a result that you can take action to achieve Trackable (measurable, observable) - measurable means knowing your direction Now at this point, you might start asking yourself a lot of ‘what if’ questions. The important thing to remember is that right now the how is not important. You just have to know the “what”.