Online Reporter
Hunt For Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
Imagine a Harare furniture maker accepting every opportunity: school desks, fitted kitchens, office chairs and wedding décor.
The workshop is busy, but deadlines slip. Materials are stretched across unfinished orders. Everyone is working, yet nobody can explain what the business wants to become.
The problem is not necessarily insufficient effort; it may be insufficient choice. At its core, greatness is about choices. Greatness is movement. You cannot move powerfully in every direction simultaneously. Before demanding greater speed, clarify where the effort should go. Do not mistake activity for strategic progress.
In their book “Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works”, A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin present the strategy choice cascade.
This consists of five connected choices covering aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities and management systems.
Strategy requires perimeter choices that include deciding what not to do.
Move with a winning aspiration
Start with this question: What would winning mean?
“We want to grow” is an ambition, but it needs substance. Grow by serving whom? Providing what value? Achieving which meaningful results?
For our furniture maker, winning might mean becoming the preferred supplier of durable classroom furniture to a defined group of schools, while building a profitable business.
Notice the shift. The ambition now describes customers, value and business success, not merely a bigger workshop.
For a community organisation, define winning through the change you intend to create.
Do not confuse defeating someone with fulfilling your purpose. Name the outcome that makes your movement worthwhile.
Move by choosing where to play
Next, choose your arena: which customers, products, geographical areas and channels will receive your attention? Our furniture maker might concentrate on school desks and chairs within a manageable delivery area, rather than simultaneously pursuing kitchens and wedding furniture.
That choice will exclude some attractive enquiries. This is the discipline of focus.
Do not call everything a priority and then blame people for being scattered. Decide where you will concentrate resources and where you will decline, defer or partner. Your calendar, budget and staffing should reflect that choice. A declared priority receiving only leftover attention is a mere wish.
Move by deciding how to win
Where to play and how to win belong together. Entering a market battle theatre is not enough. You need a credible reason for customers to choose you over alternatives.
“Work harder” does not answer that question. Our furniture maker might compete through robust, repairable desks delivered before the school term, supported by dependable repairs. That proposition must matter to the selected schools and be deliverable at a viable cost.
Test the idea. Speak to buyers. Study alternatives. Ask what customers actually value, rather than assuming your favourite feature matters most.
Do not confuse your target with your strategy. Selling more is an intended result. Explain why people would choose to buy more from you.
Move by building capabilities
The fourth choice concerns the capabilities needed to deliver your chosen advantage. Aspiration must be supported by activities your organisation can perform well.
Reliable school furniture would require sound design, skilled production, consistent materials, delivery planning and repair capacity.
Buying an impressive machine would not automatically solve every weakness.
Identify the capability gap before choosing the expenditure.
What must you learn? Who must you develop? Which expertise should you obtain through a partner?
Do not announce a promise your people have not been equipped to keep. Build the ability behind the ambition.
Move through management systems
The final choice concerns the systems that support capabilities and keep strategy under review.
These include processes, structures, communication and measures.
For the furniture business, that could mean checking order deadlines, material availability, defects, delivery performance and customer feedback.
Assign responsibility. Review exceptions. Allocate resources to the capabilities your promise depends upon.
Do not reward sales volume alone while claiming that dependable delivery defines your advantage. Ask whether targets, incentives and decisions reinforce the same direction.
A review meeting should end with a decision, an owner, or a lesson, not merely another presentation.
Keep the choices connected
The cascade is not a one-way staircase. Martin emphasises that strategic choices must be considered together, not fixed sequentially.
Suppose the promised delivery area exceeds the workshop’s capacity. Reconsider the territory, strengthen logistics, or revise the promise. Do not preserve a beautiful strategy by ignoring an inconvenient fact.
Put the five choices on one page. Then test whether they reinforce each other. What evidence supports your approach?
What would make you change it? What must stop so the important work can advance?
Make strategy a discipline of deliberate movement rather than an annual document. Choose your aspiration. Choose your arena. Define your advantage. Build your capabilities. Establish the supporting systems.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, and author of more than 15 books. He can be reached at: [email protected], WhatsApp: +263772422634.
