Strategic Leadership - General Approaches

General Approaches

Leaders recognize the need to incorporate aspects of both the analytical and human dimensions to effectively drive the organization forward but how this insight translates into action varies significantly from leader to leader.

These differences are largely driven by the bias leaders have for how they divide their time between the two dimensions. This bias is reflected in how leaders answer questions such as the following:

1. What is their primary role as chief strategist?
2. What is their job as a leader during ongoing strategy making?
3. What type of team should their strategy making create?
4. When is strategy making finished?

How leaders answer these questions will ultimately impact their ability to deliver a winning strategy because their responses indicate whether and how they build and lead an organization that is aligned and committed to a particular agenda.

Question 1: What is their primary role as chief strategist?

Should the focus be on being the architect of the strategy product or being the architect of the strategy process? Is their primary job to come up with the right strategy or is it to manage a process to achieve this outcome?

Analytical: From an analytical perspective the chief strategist’s job is to be the “architect of the perfect strategy product.” Leaders holding this perspective see the strategy itself as the outcome and managing the process is either ignored or delegated, frequently to individuals who lack line of sight to the senior person. Their concerns center on organizing and mastering the data, developing the arguments and looking for that burst of insight that will drive the organization’s competitive advantage and provide the foundation for future success.

Human: Answering the same question from the perspective of the human dimension, the chief strategist’s job is to be the “architect of the perfect strategy process.” Leaders holding this perspective see the process as the primary outcome and the product, while important, can and should be built by others. There is a recognition that the product will necessarily evolve so the more important endpoint is to build the capacity for strategic thinking across the group so that change, when it occurs, can be absorbed more quickly and more completely.

Question 2: What is their job as a leader during ongoing strategy making?

Linked to the first question, this second question focuses on how leaders conceptualize their role as they participate in the ongoing strategy process. Is it to provide bold, clear leadership that elicits confidence in their personal capabilities as “hero”, or is it to serve as a “coach and guide” who enables others to perform and stand in the limelight?

Analytical: Analytical leaders feel the need to personally come up with the right answer. If they are to be the leader, they must be the one with the solutions. They feel obligated to lead from the front on strategic issues, demonstrating expertise through business insights and customer knowledge, skillfully outsmarting the competition and outguessing the marketplace. These leaders are seen as visionary, smart leaders comfortably assuming star status as they fill the role of a Homeric hero.

Human: These leaders view themselves as coaches or guides, believing that the organization’s strategy is only as good as the breadth and depth of the understanding and commitment that it attracts. Responsibility for developing the strategy is widely dispersed but carefully coordinated. These leaders focus on guiding and responding while building commitment and empowerment among those building the strategy.

Question 3: What type of team should their strategy making create?

This third question recognizes that every strategy process defines a community and creates a team. This is true whether the leader is aware of it or not and whether the leader manages it or not. The question being asked is, “Does the strategy making create an exclusive club of capable thinkers, or create a broad base of ownership and commitment leading to a sense of citizenship across a much larger group?”

Analytical: The analytical approach to strategy creates an exclusive “inner circle” of thinkers who are in the know and make most of the decisions. Being part of this group feels good because it is similar to being part of a private society. The common element that binds society members together is their close knit exclusiveness and the extraordinary access and understanding of the data and thinking that leads to the strategy. This smaller group is well versed in the views of the leader and the data, and knows how the different pieces of the strategy fit together.

Human: A leader focusing on the human dimension is concerned about building a sense of citizenship among a much larger group of people. It is built around a process that invites much broader participation and relies on input from many others outside of the top team. The aim is to create a sense of belonging and ownership across the organization. In this situation many more people feel they can have an informed opinion about the overall strategy. They believe they have been part of its development, and that they can influence the outcome. In that sense, it is their strategy.

Question 4: When is strategy making finished?

Most leaders have an idea of how strategy making and time are related. The question being asked is, “Is strategy making as a discrete set of sequential activities with a defined start and stop? Or, is strategy something that is continually reforming itself, never quite complete or perfected but always in a state of evolution?” At its essence, the question is, “In the organization, is the strategy process fundamentally linear with a defined beginning and end or is it fundamentally iterative with no defined endpoint?”

Analytical: From the analytical view good strategy making follows a linear process with each task being “checked off” as it is completed. As set out in many strategy texts, it is a set of reasonably well defined steps leading to a fully formed plan of execution. Effectively, the strategy is set for a defined time period and executed.

Human: Leaders who lean to the human dimension see strategy as a continuing work in process, something that is more free-flowing, never truly complete but continuously being shaped as interactions occur with customers and competitors and as new issues and knowledge emerge from the people throughout the organization. They are comfortable circling back on key ideas and frequently will drive the strategy process to re-visit critical assumptions and, based on the insights gained, alter course. For these individuals, changes in strategy are markers of leadership success, not leadership failure.