The changes that have happened around us in business have made us look closer and become cognizant of an important and foundational business attribute, that we have long chosen to overlook. While business direction and strategy have long been felt as the key drivers to success, in the fluid times of today, it’s “contextual intelligence” that has become the pivotal anchor for success.

The ability of an organization to become “contextually intelligent” often presents the business with, an opportunity to reexamine its mental models, so that a clear view of its surroundings, circumstances, background, in all aspects both internally and externally, emerges from the myopic hideaways that many organizations have retreated into.

Established businesses that have achieved success in one market, invariably have developed tightly woven operating models and highly disciplined cultures that fit that market’s needs; hence they sometimes find it even more difficult to pull those things apart and rebuild than other companies do.  They are behemoths and while shifting into exploring new contexts may be straightforward, if just one or two parts of the model need to change, these organizations find it difficult to question their decisions taken in the past, that has been devoid of “contextual intelligence”.

In addition, people who run the organization, find themselves at a distance from, fathoming precisely “why” behind the intent of their operating model/s, which makes reverse engineering all the more difficult, even for these highly successful companies.

Many startups that have inspirationally begun, with the basic need to create something that either they perceive to be useful or having sensed an opportunity as a result of a similar existing business model/s operating in the environment, begin to realize that “competitive focus” does not guarantee “contextual intelligence”. So, when they try to reverse engineer inside their organizations for developing “contextual intelligence”, or at the very least “contextual understanding”, they find themselves being overwhelmed by the emerging chaos that it has to overcome.

The presence and awareness of “Contextual Intelligence” in an organization in times ahead will play a much more relevant role, as compared to “Competitive Focus”, as sustaining growth will be a derivative of “Aligning with Strategic Intent”, and even more so in the long term.