Introduction
The focus of strategic leadership as an art relies on exploring possibilities, anticipating future trends, crafting a clear vision, and mobilising resources to achieve goals. It pays attention to navigating disruptions, long-term Impact, and competitive advantage.
Strategic Leaders are marked by their ability to be visionary, analytical, decisive, adaptable, and collaborative.
The Performance Imperative for Strategic Leadership
The value of performance for these leaders is expressed in enhanced profitability, increased market share, improved employee engagement, and even societal impact. The forces they contend with include but are not limited to competition, technological disruption, economic uncertainty, and talent acquisition.
Effective Leadership is the key to navigating these challenges and unlocking sustainable performance.
Pillars of Strategic Leadership
There are four pillars of strategic leadership. They are vision, strategy, execution, and people.
Crafting a Compelling Vision
A vision is that clear and inspiring picture of the future state of the organisation. The leader is responsible for crafting it in a masterful and compelling way. Strategic leaders know that the vision has got to be ambitious, inspiring, achievable, and clear.
The process of visioning requires executive sponsorship, stakeholder management, an analysis of the organisation’s SWOT, as well as the ability to galvanise collective ownership.
When done well, it will attract the right talent, motivate employees, maximise corporate resources, and ultimately enable the realisation of business objectives.
Developing a Robust Strategy
A company’s strategy is a well defined roadmap to achieve the vision, considering internal strengths, and external threats/possibilities. Its main focus are: goal setting, competitive analysis, market research, risk assessment, and resource allocation.
Strategic leaders often leverage tools and frameworks in the development of their strategy. Strategies such as SWOT analysis enables organisations to acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses while exploring the effect of opportunities and threats to their vision. Another tool used for strategy development is the PESTLE analysis. Leaders consider the impact of political, economic, social, technology, legal, and environmental factors on the possibility of success of the company. Others have leveraged on the four levers of the Balanced Scorecard as well as Porter’s Five Forces.
I have been a champion of the T-ABOVE Model. This model identifies the indicators for determining the effect of a successful strategy on the people. It measures changes in people’s Thoughts, Actions, Beliefs, Opinions, Visions (Aspirations), and Experiences. A successful corporate strategy hat does not touch these points of her people will not likely succeed.
The derivative from a well a crafted strategy will be currency and market relevance, competitiveness, business agility, resilience, and purposiveness.
Execution
Ideas may rule the world but executors of ideas are the rulers of the world. There is no success in view for an organisation that does not execute her plans. Execution is that flawless implementation of the strategy through effective communication, resource allocation, and performance management.
Execution is often faced with challenges that include communication breakdown, misalignment of resources, resistance to change, lack of accountability, performance measurement, and insufficient training.
The channels to successful execution will require tackling these challenges by ensuring clear communication, resource alignment, change management, accountability, performance measurement, implementing learning Interventions.
People
Leaders know that it is in empowering and engaging employees to contribute their best and drive performance that they stand a chance to succeed.
Leaders know that people are the most important resource available to the organisation because of all resources, they are the only resource that can create, improve, replicate, deploy, and destroy other resources.
The power that people bring to bear on organisational success rests on their capabilities; the credentials, attributes, skills, knowledge, and experience. They know that their competence is limited by the quality of their emotional, intellectual, social, physical and professional capacity.
To make the most of them, leaders must acquire them, consult them, develop (grooming and growing) them, engage them, and where necessary exit them.
Leading Through Change
When the times are good, leaders are needed. When the times are bad, leaders are needed. When the times remain uncertain, leaders are needed. When the dynamics of society sets in and the economy keeps fluctuating, leaders have an opportunity to bring their prowess to bear as their organisations journeys toward success.
The Four Opportunities in Change
The opportunities that change brings to leaders include a chance to:
- Initiate. Change gives leaders the leaders opportunities to start something novel and bring something new to the table for consideration.
- Innovate. Change is the opportunity that a leader has to improve on things that are productive. Whether they are systems, approaches, tools, or ideas.
- Replicate. Change is the opportunity that leaders have to integrate working principles they have seen elsewhere. It is an opportunity to integrate best practices.
- Terminate. Change is the opportunity leaders have to discontinue any unproductive element of their business.
Models for Leading through Change
Several authors have suggested models and ways to lead change. I have curated from a few of them and believe that those who effectively navigate change do the following:
- Create a sense of urgency. The pace of change in the world today forbids that leaders lag on their strategies. Put everyone on their toes. Systems are moving and markets are changing. The one who is not moving will be removed.
- Form a guiding coalition. Every organisation knows that success lies in the right delegation of tasks. Leaders that succeed through change always have their A-team. Put together a team of people that you can depend on to deliver exceptionally for you.
- Present a well articulated vision. Ambiguity is a robber of opportunity. Leaders cannot take a chance with clarity. The more your team understands their pursuit, the easier it will be for them to commit to it.
- Delivery quality results. Nothing commands respect like results. To excel through challenges is to win in the market place. Leaders know that one major way to prove that they are capable of sitting at the helm of affairs in the organisation is to hit the targets and deliver value.
- Institutionalise change efforts. People will come and go but the institutions often time will outlive her founders and managers. The strategies that produces result must be institutionalised through policies so that organisations do not keep reinventing the wheel.
Conclusion
Leaders have an opportunity to galvanise their teams to succeed by ensuring they harness resources. They know they will never have all that they need; so they lean and leverage. Inspire greatness, they know there is value in their group; hence they ensure it manifests. Project and protect their legacy. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the capacity and the will to carry on.