April 3rd, 2007
Strategic Intent Statements
I was tagged to a meme on goals. Goals are hip, when i have asked friends about help with my blog, they all ask, what are your goals for your blog. Being an old sales guy, I am use to goal setting. I had goals for each, hour, day, week month quarter and year. We tracked our activity extremely close.
Here comes a joke, 2 salesmen were in a bar, talking about their month.Salesman 1 a loud mouth and bragger told salesman2,an achiever, how great his week was. Salesman 1 expressed, I am so good, I did 1 proposal, 3 demos and found 5 new prospects. The reply from salesman 2, I didn’t sell anything either!
Remember goals are hip and necessary. They must tie into the strategic intent of your company. In 1960 John Kennendy said,”by the end of the decade we will land a man on the moon and return him home safety1″ The space program was hatch and a great example of a strategic intent statement was the rally cry. The entire nation knew the vision of the program. Neil Armstrong made the small step for man but a giant leap for mankind upon landing on the moon.
Saying all that to say, business goals must help the company meet their strategic intention. The statement must be a stretch but achievable, must be measurable, and have a time frame and utlimatily be good for the company’s growth. The goals we set must help us contribute to the company intent.
Now we know goals are hip but do they fit? Has leadership expressed an intent for the company? Do you know it? What is your benifit if the company reaches their strategic intent? Is measurable? Can it be done? Ther are many other action step that lead to goals and action plans. If you are the leader the strategic intent comes from you. Does your company have one? does your goals fit. Talk to me, comment on this! Keep hope alive!
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:00 am
It is a key component of business and we should employ it on things a little as monetizing your blog. This way you can ensure your are not employing things that are out of the scope of your plan, this waste precious resources that you could be using to solidify your established strategy.
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Latimer, first, I truely am pleased and honored that you have frequent comments. You have taken this discussion to a higher level, should your blog’s strategy have commercial goals as an intent and if so what if big money is available but does not fit with your vision? A good problem to have
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Now as a Blogger I wish that were a problem I had right now! But in my opinion your goals or mission should always be evaluated. Business fouces and scope can change slight provided all stakeholders are on the same page, but I believe there still should be a basic guideline that allows for scalabitlity of scope
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I agree, goals and missions should be flexibile, if the strategic intent has enought sounding boards and is sound, it should need little change, how you get there is the part that can change plently. I wonder what george bush’s vision of the future is?
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Jim , that’s a can of worms I probably wouldn’t understand even if GW himself explained it to me. Heck he probably doesn’t understand it.
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
right on
April 4th, 2007 at 8:01 am
James, Latimer interesting discussion.
As you said Latimer communicating those goals to all the stakeholders involved and ensuring that they are all on the same page is to me one of the most critical missions for an organization. Many fail to do so and wonder why everyone is going in different directions and they don’t have the desired results.
Cheers
Tisha
April 4th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Tisha, nice to hear from you. The purpose of a well thought out strategic intent statement is to get everyone on the same page. The business silo’s make communication a challenge and dept blogs would help!