Does Your Company's Planning Have Strategic Intelligence?

In the realm of personal development, it is widely accepted that people have emotional intelligence, which is defined as a balance between self-awareness and social awareness. Companies have an "intelligence" too. And the definition of emotional intelligence that we use with individuals is an apt metaphor for what helps an organization be strategically intelligent.

Self Awareness + Social Awareness = Emotional Intelligence

Company Self Awareness + Marketplace Awareness = Strategic Intelligence

Strategic intelligence within an organization is the company's ability to understand both itself and environment in which it lives, so that the company can connect with others to achieve goals of common interest.

Unfortunately, many company leaders say, "We did strategic planning three years ago. We don't see the need to do that again." These people are thinking about creating a notebook. They aren't thinking about maintaining this strategic intelligence about who they are and how they fit into their environment. They lack a framework for understanding and developing strategic intelligence.

Company Self Awareness

Company self awareness is about understanding your company's vision, mission, values, strengths, limitations, goals, and plans for future success. It is having these so well defined that each employee is connected and motivated to do their best work for the organization.

However, this is only half of true strategic intelligence. The other piece is matching your company self-awareness with marketplace awareness that is in-depth, accurate and timely. Strategically intelligent companies know their customers, competitors, industry trends, future technologies, and a whole host of other factors that are critical to their continued success. It's the depth, accuracy, and timeliness of this information that allows these companies to connect effectively and profitably with the world in which they live. If you want to develop this kind of strategic intelligence in your organization, consider the following suggestions:

1. Deliberately identify and discuss the issues that are going to have the greatest impact on your future business performance.

You need to understand the organization at many different levels. Ask yourself, "Why do we exist as a company? What are we good at? What are we not good at? What matters most to us in our vision, values and goals? What are we doing well? Where we can continue to improve? What specific issues do we need to address? What are the parts (people, core competencies, resources) that make up our whole? How can we re-arrange or leverage these parts for greater results?"

Then, consciously and deliberately work to understand the world in which your business exists. This includes understanding things such as demographic, economic, environmental, technological and regulatory trends. You also need to be aware of what's happening with your customers and their businesses. Don't just think about the trends that impact your business; also think about the trends that impact your customers' businesses. The same is true with competitors—what can you learn about their focus, direction and probable future? To develop strategic intelligence, you need to constantly be thinking about these factors, testing and either re-affirming or altering past assumptions.

2. Have the right people involved.