Every one of our clients is looking for sustainable competitive advantages that are not easily replicable by their competitors. Porter (1980) grouped the typical competitive strategies into three fundamental methods of outperforming competitors:
• Cost leadership
• Differentiation (uniqueness)
• Focus (market segment)
Unfortunately, each of these strategies is transparent to our competitors and, therefore, a convenient and visible target. While competitors may have more or less difficulty in matching your strategic success, they will always know exactly what the target is and where the bar is set. Peter Senge has persuasively presented the argument that innovation is the only true competitive advantage since it powers the continual re-invention of the organization (its strategy, products, services, methods, etc.). If you need any greater impetus, Gary Hamel's recent Fortune magazine article goes even further by issuing a warning:
"Any company hoping to survive the tsunami of innovation and change that the web threatens to unleash will need more than a digital business plan. It must mirror the internet itself – to be open, democratic, tightly networked, non-hierarchical, experimental, endlessly adaptable and utterly restless. 'Clicks and mortar' doesn't begin to capture it. Try 'habitual and radical innovation'."
Faced with this escalating need for innovation and adaptability, many of us are trying to infuse dynamism into our organizational cultures.
However, most of us are frustrated by our inability to translate the concept of a learning organization into reality. There are many attempts to explain the how-to's of building and re-inventing organizations but given the failure rate, it appears there is a large disconnect between the vision and its implementation.
At BHI, we believe that this disconnect occurs between the creation of corporate initiatives and the day-to day behaviors of leaders and team members. Unfortunately, most managers do not have an effective road map for building teams that naturally produce creative solutions. Research shows that organizations that teach the fundamentals of building peak performance teams and then support this initiative with structure and rewards develop a sustainable competitive advantage.
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