Match Dominant Competencies to Your Strategy to Win
Most executives and CEO want to win the strategic game in the marketplace. Yet, time after time, they get distracted due to opportunities ( this is very true with entrepreneur driven company executives) or the large corporation executive team is unfocused due to the temptation to keep everyone happy rather than enforce strict discipline on somewhat complex issues.
The somewhat complex issues I’m referring to is the matching of dominant competencies that match with the strategic drivers of the organization. These competencies are also known as areas of excellence. They are the keys to keeping the strategy healthy and on track for success.
The research has shown a direct relationship between the areas of excellent or dominant strategic competencies and dominating the marketplace you have chosen to play in. Without these dominant competencies being in place, your organization will join the ranks of the under-performers – you know, the half that makes the top half possible.
The idea is to identify the dominant strategic competencies that match up with the strategic major driver selected by the executive team. Then once identified these areas of excellence should receive preferential treatment and allocation of additional resources to insure there complete development. In fact, you want their level of development to exceed any held by your competitors, thus driving a competitive advantage in these key areas of importance.
If for any reason, resources are diverted elsewhere, your strategic proficiency will diminish. When this happens, your competitor will gain an upper hand in the strategic race and they will gain the advantage. Lose your edge in your dominant competency and loss the race to the ones who remained focused and disciplined.
Let me give you an example of areas of excellence relative to the your strategic driver of choice. This one is dear to me, because our company choose the strategic driver of Technology Based. I know we are a consulting firm, yet, what is important to remember is that technology covers more than electronics and computers. In fact, many systems and processes are referred to as technologies and having a specific understanding or know how regarding the application of any technology fits the Technology Driven definition.
Back to the example of the areas of excellence or dominant strategic drivers for a technology driven company. There are two major areas of excellence for every strategic driven – if you add to these you begin to dilute your resources and lose focus in implementation. So the two dominant competencies for our organization is…
- Basic or Applied Research
- Applications Marketing
Basic research for us is learning about different processes and systems – in depth – then using this information to solve client problems better and faster than anyone else could. Applied research is documenting the work we do, finding the key variables that determine success, reinforce our processes to insure faster success and document things like return on investment and payback time frames.
Applications Marketing is simply marketing a solution to a common industry problem. In order to successfully grow, we must find other companies that have problems we know how to resolve. By mastering application marketing, we can those companies and organizations with the problems and offer them a solution – which we have documented with other companies similar to the prospective client.
Each of the ten strategic drivers have a pair of areas of excellence. So after the executive team has chosen the strategic driven for the organization, then the objective is to learn which strategic competencies must get the preferential decisions, resources and management focus to insure the success of the strategy.
If you want to know the areas of excellence for each of the major strategic drivers, send an email request to StrategicDrivers@theleadershipbuilder.com and we will send you to the list immediately. Be sure to use your primary email address so you can get this important information.
Voss Graham
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Tags: areas of excellence, Matching Dominant Competencies with Strategy, Technology Driven companies, Voss Graham, Winning Strategy
