Human Motivation: The Forgotten Element in Our Theories and Practices

“Companies that are afraid to commit to goals that lie outside the range of planning,” Gary Hamel and C.K Prahalad conclude in their booklet, Strategic Intent,“are unlikely to become global leaders.”  The authors argue that strategic planning fetters companies to the present and filters their views of possibility through the limiting lens of their current assumptions and limitations. Their alternative to strategic planning is Strategic Intent: harnessing resources and human motivation to an all-consuming, shared ambition, such as beating competitors or innovating far beyond their current level. Companies that became global leaders “created an obsession with winning at all levels of the organization and then sustained that obsession for 10-20 years quest for global leadership.”