Shifting the Strategy Burden
On Friday, as we were winding down dinner, my daughter asked, “Daddy, what did people do before grocery stores existed?”
To get a better sense of what she was trying to understand, I asked, “What time period are you thinking about?’
Zola replied, “I’m talking about ancient history. Like, maybe, the 1980s?”
After I suppressed the fury of her accidentally biting comment, we discussed how “ancient” is one of those words whose definition everyone intuitively knows, but it’s actually open to interpretation. (Zola was able to sniff out a lecture, so she left the table quickly.)
I thought about that when trying to figure out how to synthesize everything I’ve read on strategic leadership into a clear definition, since it’s also a term of art, and even the “science” produces only observational evidence.
That said, by strategic leadership, I mean the set of capabilities and behaviors that enables someone to lead a team or organization that both has a good strategy and the ability to evolve that strategy so that it remains relevant. The literature suggests that being a great strategic leader is about two things:
Building great individual strategic instincts, and
Creating a strategic culture throughout one’s team and organization.
If one does not do the former, there’s a much greater risk of leading the team into poor strategic decisions. And if a leader neglects the latter, they’re much more likely to spend all of their time cajoling others to focus on the priorities, while refereeing political disputes and resolving the conflicts that come from misalignment.
With that as a prelude, one mindset stands out as particularly important to being a strategic leader: Shifting from an approach of I am responsible for the strategy to I am responsible for us having a strategy, and for everyone being jazzed about carrying it out.
When coaching leaders, the benefit of this mindset shift comes up regularly in discussion. The exchange usually starts with a leader’s description of being uncertain about some decision. When I sense that the decision is really weighing on their shoulders, I usually ask, What would happen if you put the questions you’re wrestling with to the team?
The question is a test of whether they’re taking on 100% of the strategy burden, relying solely on their ideas, or whether they are utilizing the talents and perspectives of those around them.
Sharing the questions we’re wrestling with as leaders can also help because it forces us to more directly confront the political and emotional aspects of getting a team to work in an aligned way. In complex organizations, that is more often the barrier to strategic success than the existence of “right” ideas.
Finally, shifting to a mindset of facilitating the creation of strategy also has an emotional one—removing the weight of the decision from the leader’s shoulders. That is, it makes leading easier!