Competing with strategic agility

The Nigerian marketplace is presently going through an unprecedented shift and dizzying pace of change.

Business frameworks can no longer rely on the usual approaches to strategy in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Even holding on to established competitive advantage has become an exercise in self-destruction. We now have waves and competitive edges are becoming elusive.

The pace of the marketplace is fast and uncertain. The business leader must therefore stay alert and keep his head up. Advantages are becoming transient and there is continuous restrategizing with new methods to remain afloat. Smart leaders must be deft, fresh and practical. We must acknowledge competitive realities. Choose the clear paths forward and with agility, be on the watch out for illuminations. We will continue to reassess our brands, never relent in satisfying customers and keep up with highly connected employee engagement.

My recommendation for business leaders in this season of “transient advantages” is inventiveness. We must become inventive leaders. Kenichi Ohmae, Japanese-American strategist pointed out that uncertainty in the marketplace must be addressed with creative insight.

Business strategies must continuously adapt because “strategies are not stereotypes”. Strategies bring insights into fruition and thrive on a combination of creative insight as well as creative inspiration. We must synthesize and reshuffle. Results of business activities should be conditioned and directed with sensitivity and receptiveness of the 3Rs: Reality, Ripeness and Resources.

Reality includes the customer and the determination to be sensitive to lives and livelihoods. Organisations’ areas of competence are very important and of course, the entire competitive ecosystem is the field of play.

Ripeness is timing and the ever-ready state and “alive” mode of our consciousness. Resources, definitely, are an obvious constraint.

Inventive leadership entails the readiness to free the creative power of leaders’ subconscious, manage habits of mind and modes of thinking and adopt relevant and on-the-go strategic concepts: We must refuse to follow the status quo but imbibe the constructive (maybe disruptive too) aspects of creativity. This creativity must, at all times, showcase strategic insight and carefully thinking-through productivity.

Also, this is the season for leaders to bring decision-making and idea-management capability to play. Leaders must “work with integrity and succeed with integrity”. Excellent choices with intelligent variations must be made within time constraints. We are travelling on hitherto unexplored paths, so, please be aware of impactful consequences.

We must encourage, develop, evaluate, prioritize ideas and insights for assured outcomes.

No matter the challenges of the economy, we must not waver on continuously improving organisations’ performance. We must, therefore, not relent in profoundly working on attitudes and behaviours of associates. As I mentioned in this column earlier, excellent corporate culture is emplaced with focus on patterns of behaviour. Processes must be fair and associates must be valued and respected. Do not stifle criticisms and encourage ideas as well as suggestions. Sharing of feedbacks and ideas will not diminish leaders’ authority but enhance it. We are not voting or asking for consensus in the workplace but pursuing best ideas. Engagement enables exchange of ideas and sharing of useful inputs. Organisations must build collective wisdom. Value creation is based on ideas and innovation.

An Inventive leader can effectively navigate change. But he must be humane, authentic, compassionate, hold associates accountable for performance, always create that necessary sense of urgency but also patient. He must create and work with an inclusive culture.

I have often re-emphasized the fact that leaders must motivate the individuals that make up organisations’ teams, to work together, inspire each other and perform at the highest level. Smart organisations must harness individual talents. Immensely talented performers bring enormous value into highly desirable cohesive, and productive teams. Leaders must align intentions and refuse to allow likability to trump up competence. I am always excited with teams that are committed to the overall purpose. Talented associates must be encouraged to catalyze and optimize performance.

The inventive leader must increase variance through creative solutions. He is the dexterous leader that practices sequential ambidexterity. He is like the pendulum that swings effectively from exploit to explore modes. He epitomizes operational discipline with his focus on profitable growth. He builds internal efficiencies and “exploits” capabilities. No matter the shift in the marketplace, he gets better and better in daily business processes. He is always getting the job done.

He gets salespeople on the field and regularly works on feedbacks and builds bridges with highly beneficial insights. He is creative, innovative, well-skilled and flexible. He dives deeper with sequential clarity and is always “pulling it off”.

Let me conclude with this take-away from John C. Maxwell’s Laws of Leadership. My focus in this article is the “Law of Intuition”. It teaches that leaders must evaluate every aspect of the business with a leadership bias.

“A leader must (constantly) read the situation and know instinctively what play to call”. He calls it “informed intuition”. The composition of this, according to John C. Maxwell, includes skills and experience, intuitive knowledge of the business and exceptional leadership intuition. He pointed out that the effective leader must always be equipped and ready to put informed intuition into action “in an instant”.

He must “adaptably” implement relevant procedures and ensure that employees and associates are trained and retrained. They must be developed and guided with a sense of purpose. He noted that “the goal must galvanize and rally the team always”. Skills, among other factors, he added, must create informed intuition.

John Maxwell advised leaders not to get blindsided because “opportunities jump at leaders and they must always see them”. “Leaders must maximise every asset and resource for the benefit of organisations”, he added.

On timing, he said: “Right action at the right time delivers success. You must never lose opportunities”.