A Wrap-Up on Strategic Leadership

Just as I did in the final post of the series on Finding Joy, Meaning, and Satisfaction at Work, I thought I’d share the other topics that came from reviewing the books on strategic leadership.

You can’t plant new strategic plants without first pulling some weeds. Here, the “weeds” are any activity that will take resources that the more important plants need to grow. Effective strategists figure out a way to prune activities that are outside of the current strategy by shutting them down, or starving them for resources, and shifting discretionary investments. It’s a waste of time to count on people to voluntarily change—both because of inertia, and because people will never agree to something that’s bad for them.

Don’t do strategic planning when you need a fundamentally new vision. As Peter Mintzberg writes in The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, “Planning is fundamentally a conservative process: it acts to conserve the basic orientation of the organization.” When real change is needed, leaders have to confront that fact directly. A planning process—especially in committee form—will never yield big change otherwise.

Strategy consultants and strategic planning groups are like marriage counselors. They can certainly help, but they never create meaningful change on their own. The people in the relationship—the core management team members—have to do that work. And only direct, ongoing conversation among team members can yield the kind of alignment needed to be successful at strategy. Games of telephone don’t work.

What’s going through customers’ heads at the moment they decide to take money out of their pockets and give it to us? So many strategic questions can be resolved if there’s a clear answer to that question. The same applies for why donors give us money, or employees choose us over another company, or other stakeholders work with us over someone else. 

If the answer doesn’t involve a simple response like “makes me money,” “helps me look good in front of my friends/boss,” or “gets me closer to fulfilling [insert basic animal desire], then you probably aren’t clear on the real value proposition. 

That’s it for now! I’d love to hear your feedback on this series on being an effective strategic leader.

Thanks for reading!

Charles

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