Have you seen the new Walmart Advanced Vehicle Experience (WAVE) concept truck that is powered by a prototype turbine-powered hybrid engine with a trailer made almost exclusively with carbon fiber, which saves 4,000 pounds?
This is Strategy at its finest and has the world’s number one retailer leveraging their strength–their logistics network–and turning it up a notch.
Clearly Walmart was thinking way out of the box in designing this new semi truck–in fact it appears that they threw the box out in the trash. Walmart isn’t in the truck building business?
True strategists look outside their realm and outside of what they do today as well as looking at what they are good at. Recently I talked about the SWOT Assessment and had a lot of “know it all” input from fellow strategists saying that a SWOT is this and a SWOT is that. Ladies and gentlemen, see the result of a great application of strategy based on a SWOT. This is why I highlighted some simple tips for you to start using a SWOT effectively.
Heavy-duty trucks spend more time on the road than passenger vehicles, so improving their efficiency can have a major effect on emissions–and their owners’ bottom lines. That’s why Walmart is getting into the truck-design business with the WAVE. With its aerodynamic cab, the WAVE certainly doesn’t look like any other large truck currently on U.S. roads and doesn’t operate like one either.
Walmart’s design was achieved in part by placing the driver in the center of the cab. The steering wheel is flanked by LCD screens–in place of conventional gauges–and there is a sleeping compartment directly behind the driver’s pod. The WAVE features a range-extended electric powertrain, consisting of a Capstone micro-turbine and an electric motor. To reduce weight, the entire truck is made of carbon fiber–including the trailer. Walmart says this is the first example of a carbon-fiber trailer ever produced, and that its 53-foot side panels are the first single pieces of carbon fiber that large that have ever manufactured. Like the tractor, the trailer was also designed for optimum aerodynamic efficiency. It features a convex nose, which not only reduces aerodynamic drag but has the added of benefit of increasing cargo space in the trailer.
Take that Peterbuilt and Freightliner! Ha! And I thought the MAN Super Streamlined Semi-Truck was cool. The MAN was designed by truck manufactures, not a super store retailer!
I’ll say it again; use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses. Then turn threats into opportunities. Walmart is known for their distribution system–it is what makes them Walmart and it is their biggest strength. They focused on the threats to that strength and turned it into opportunity. This is a perfect demonstration of a SWOT in action.
Strategic planning, as a structured and systematic process, is successful when it is leader-led and overcomes the five reasons 70% of all strategies fail. Learn how to see your plan through to success. The strategic planning process is where leaders of an organization establish the vision of the organization’s future and then develop and implement the actions necessary to achieve that future. This article expands on the strategic planning concepts addressed in 
Strength. Strengths are internally positive aspects about the organization. These are the things that make the organization strong and are the main things an organization can leverage to overcome internal weaknesses and external threats. Organizations tend to focus only on their weaknesses and take their strengths for granted. A failure to focus on and nurture your organizational strengths can quickly turn them into a negative. When you brainstorm to build a SWOT, you tend to come up with a lot of perceived strengths, some of which might not be true.
Weakness. Weaknesses are also internal to the organization, but these are the challenges that could prevent the organization from achieving its eventual vision. Only the most glaring weaknesses are normally highlighted by an organization when brainstorming and usually this list is short. When done correctly, this tends to be a long and difficult list for leaders to swallow. Although it doesn’t sound like SWOT, I often refer to this box as Challenges (a SCOT). Nothing in an organization will prevent it from achieving its vision, unless they fail to address the challenges in front of them.
Opportunity. Many times Opportunities and Threats can be the same thing, but simply it’s the way you look at them. Basically, these both fall into a risk category. Opportunities are positive and external to the organization. If you have an opportunity that exists within your organization, then it is a Strength that you just aren’t leveraging at the moment. The importance of focusing on the external factor of it is that there is less of a guarantee that you can turn Opportunities into Strengths. Many organizations, especially those that don’t currently have a strategic plan or the one that exists is poor, fail to focus on the external factors. Extremely effective strategies focus more on the external factors then the internal. This is how you develop strategic positioning and become prepared for the what might happen versus dealing with it when it happens.
Threat. Obviously, Threats are the external negative aspects surrounding an organization. These are significant threats that the organization faces or could face in the future that they have no control over. Competitors and government regulations often fall into this category. If your organization is part of a bigger organization, things like down-sizing, reorganizations, and funding, even though they exist in the greater organization, still can be external to your control. The two biggest things about Threats is to determine ways to either turn a Threat into an Opportunity, or to develop a mitigation plan should the Threat materialize.