8 How Does a Leader Do It?

Max wasn’t surprised when the organization’s board chose his unit’s director to lead the organization, after the organization’s founder and longtime leader retired. Max was constantly in awe of his director, not for his director’s knowledge, skill, or presence but for what Max could only describe as his strategic sense. Max felt as if the director was able to see around corners and beneath the surface of things. The director never seemed to take things at face value but instead always seemed to see some sort of pattern, trend, or tendency beneath things that enabled his director to see where they had come from and where they might be headed. 

Strategies

Leadership is a lot about strategy. The prior chapter named strategy as one of a leader’s primary responsibilities. The word strategy comes from the Greek for an army general or leader. The word’s original usage had to do with the army leader’s overall plan for victory, including where to direct the troops, with what formations, supply lines, and battle tactics. In modern English, strategy applies to a leader’s overall insight or approach for moving the workforce closer to the organization’s goals. Strategy is a leader’s magic sauce. Managers apply practices; leaders pursue strategies. Managers play checkers; leaders play chess. Masterful leaders play three-dimensional chess. Strategic thinkers see the emerging patterns and possibilities. Indeed, strategic thinkers may have a catalog of patterns and designs already in mind from which to draw.  To be an effective leader, don’t take everything at face value, simply as its surface appears. Instead, develop and regularly deploy your deeper strategic sense. 

Styles

Appreciate the difference between leadership strategy and leadership style. Strategy involves deeper insight guiding approaches toward achieving organizational aims. Style involves a leader’s personality, persona, or preferences influencing the way in which the leader leads. Strategy is deep and hidden, while style is on the surface and evident. Autocratic leadership, involving command and control, is one leadership style, while deferential leadership, involving delegation to subordinates and their empowerment to carry out the tasks, is a contrary leadership style. Other leadership styles can include collaborative, empathetic, directive, relational, and authoritative. Leadership can even be laissez faire, referring to let them do as they please or leave them alone. Leadership styles can be important to a leader’s effectiveness. Different teams and team members react differently to different leadership styles. One leader’s style may work well for one team under one set of circumstances but not so well for the same team under a different set of circumstances. Recognize your preferred leadership style, but be prepared to adapt it to your organization or team needs.

Tactics

Also appreciate the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategies generally refer to the larger approaches toward achieving the goal, while tactics refer to the immediate actions. Product development, for instance, might be a company strategy, while incentivizing exploration and rewarding new product designs would be tactics to carry out the strategy. The strategy dictates the tactics, not the other way around. Your team may, for instance, be good at a certain tactic, like encouraging new product designs. But if new product development isn’t the right strategy for your organization, then your team’s tactical ability to generate new product designs shouldn’t make you change your strategy. By all means, recognize your team’s skill, and adopt a strategy that draws on your team’s best attributes. But don’t let team skills dictate strategy, when you know the organization has different needs than those the team’s skills happen to serve at the time. See and deploy strategy, not just familiar team tactics and comfortable skills. 

Plans

Strategies go hand in hand with plans. As the prior chapter mentioned, a strategy isn’t exactly the plan itself but instead the insight that generates and guides the plan. Organizations benefit when the leader sees something deeper on which to draw for plans. Workforce development, for instance, is a leadership strategy to increase organizational expertise. Requiring organization managers to attend training sessions and reimbursing for job-related education expenses are plans carrying out a workforce-development strategy. If, for another example, new product development is the business strategy, hiring additional engineers in a newly formed product-development unit might be the plan to carry out the product-development strategy. Distinguish your strategy from your plans. Strategize first, then plan to carry out the strategy. Don’t leave your strategy without plans. A strategy without plans is like a seed planted in dry soil, without water. Plans carry out the strategy. Be sure that you are doing planning around your strategic insights.

Sectors

What options, then, does a leader have for strategies? Your available strategies can depend on the field or sector in which you lead. Business strategies can differ from nonprofit strategies, which can differ from education strategies, which can differ from military or government agency strategies. Retail strategies can differ from wholesale strategies, which can differ from industrial, financial, transportation, distribution, or resource-extraction strategies. As already indicated in the prior chapter, if, for example, you are leading an organization selling goods or services in competitive markets, your business strategy may be market penetration, market development, or new-product development. If, for another example, you are leading a nonprofit social-service organization, your strategy may be needs assessment,  donor development, or volunteer engagement. If, for another example, you are leading a department within a college or university, your strategy may be faculty development, cross-field partnerships, or collaborative learning. To learn your strategic options, study your sector or field.

Discernment

A leader’s process of discerning the right strategy or mix of strategies can be important to both making the right choice and seeing the organization carry out the chosen strategy. You may already know what strategy you want to pursue. But if you haven’t involved your team’s members in the discernment and adoption of the strategy, you may not get the buy-in that you need and expect. Your team may not understand your strategy or your reasons for pursuing it. You may also miss important opportunities to modify your strategy to better fit your team’s needs. And you may miss the opportunity to give credit for the strategy to the team or other team members, to give the team a sense of ownership and encourage commitment. Consider involving key team members such as unit managers or department directors in your strategic discernment. Including retired leaders or directors in your discernment can give you a more-experienced view. Also consider gathering information from customers, clients, patrons, donors, volunteers, alumni, regulators, forecasters, and other sources and constituents. Do your research so that you know the landscape, needs, interests, and options. 

Schedule

The schedule on which you strategize and plan can also be important. Organizations tend to do strategic planning periodically, on an annual, bi-annual, or every-five-years schedule, more so than impulsively on the spur of the moment. Hatching a new strategy can occur at any time, by inspiration. But resist the temptation to abandon one strategy for another as soon as a better one appears. Your team likely needs time to understand and implement one strategy before you move on to the next one. If you propose and urge too many strategies, one after another, you risk having your team take none of them seriously. If you discern a new strategy that you alone can carry out, then do so, inspirationally. Your team may see your excitement and creativity, and draw motivation from them. Yet choosing a schedule on which to review old and adopt new strategies can help you and your team diligently research, prepare, reflect, and respond. And discern strategy in some form of on-site or off-site retreat, when you and your team can set aside the day’s demands to focus on the big view and long term.

Initiatives

Adopting and publishing strategic initiatives can be both wise and necessary to see strategy implemented. Once you and your leadership team discern the right strategy, commit your discernment to a written plan or graphic representation. Determine how best to implement the strategic plan. Assign responsibility for aspects of it to specific personnel or units. Ensure that the responsible personnel or units have the authority and resources to carry out the strategic plan. Include in the plan objective measures for its success, and monitor those measures for progress. Require managers and units to report to leadership in a format consistent with the strategic plan, so that your leadership team can see and evaluate the progress at regular meetings. Beware, though, elaborate strategic planning that results in nothing more than a handsome strategic-plan presentation, website page, or brochure. A strategic plan in the file drawer may check a leadership box, but it won’t do your organization any good unless the organization implements it.  

Marketing

Your organization may benefit from your strategic planning not just in improving its general or specific performance but also in other indirect ways. Strategic plans can, for instance, be effective marketing tools. As your organization’s leader, you need to maintain the confidence of your organization’s external constituents, whether customers, clients, patrons, alumni, donors, shareholders, suppliers, or other interested parties. Your strategic plan for your organization’s survival, growth, and improvement may be your best possible marketing tool for those external constituents. Outsiders who depend on your organization or have a broader interest in it need to see that the organization has a vision that will lead it into the future. The proverb is that people perish without vision. When you publicize your strategic plan, you show your organization’s constituents that you’ve given appropriate thought to your organization’s future. Your strategies show both the depth of your insight and your commitment to your organization’s longer-term future. Organizations of all kinds publish their strategic plans not just internally to their workforces or members but also externally for the marketing and public-relations value of those plans. 

Confidentiality

Conversely, some strategic plans do not warrant outside publication. Strategic plans that address an organization’s weakness may be better kept confidential within the leadership team, even if the measures the plans pursue are apparent and thus public. A strategic plan should not shame or embarrass the organization’s workforce or managers, or sow concern among outsiders over the organization’s stability and effectiveness. If your strategies address organizational fault lines, keep them to yourself or your leadership team, even when you pursue the corrective plans. You may also determine to keep your strategic plans confidential, if your organization operates in a highly competitive environment. You may not want your competitors swiftly adopting your own insightful plans, making their execution more difficult and canceling out any gain you might have had from them. You may also want to disclose strategies only as they begin to bear fruit, after your organization has proven their fitness. Why publish a losing strategy? Instead, share your strategic successes both internally and externally to build internal and external confidence in your strategic leadership.

Reflection

On a scale from one to ten, how strategic of a thinker are you? In other words, how capable are you of taking a step back, enough to discern what approaches, insights, or stances are guiding your plans for your organization’s actions? Do you have a leadership style, apart from your strategies? If so, how would you describe it? Do you have a good tactical sense for what exactly to do to pursue your strategic plan? What are common strategies in your organization’s sector or field? How could you research and discover additional strategies? Can you discern what strategies other organizations in your sector or field are pursuing? Do those other organizations publish their strategic plans? Can you see how your strategic plan might also serve as a marketing tool, encouraging your organization’s customers, clients, patrons, donors, suppliers, or other constituents? Conversely, do you need to keep your strategic plan confidential to ensure that it is effective and does not damage organizational interests?

Key Points

• Leaders need to discern team strategies, insights, and approaches.

• Strategies inform approaches, while styles reflect personal preferences.

• Strategies guide the overall approach, while tactics accomplish aspects.

• Strategies generate perceptive plans to pursue organization goals.

• Strategies differ according to an organization’s field or sector.

• Discern strategy in retreat with team involvement after research.

• Adopt strategy on a periodic schedule allowing time to implement.

• Publish, promote, implement, and evaluate strategic initiatives. 

• Strategic plans can also serve as marketing tools showing depth.

• Some strategic plans need to remain confidential to be effective.

Read Chapter 9.