Strategy
Leaders make choices every day. They make choices about problems needing solutions and opportunities needing investigation. These choices are strategic, but they are not necessarily a ‘good strategy’.
They become a good strategy when they map out a realistic game-plan to win. This is too big a topic to explore here, but it is important to recognise the relationship between a winning strategy and successful change. Having a realistic strategy for how to win in your field (a game-plan) is part of the change process. The rest of the change process involves the successful execution of that strategy.
And to successfully execute that strategy, you need your people and your organisation to be agile enough to make it work without creating a truckload of new problems.
Making good strategic choices requires agile thinking. It requires the ability to see into the current reality and make good choices about current needs. It also requires the ability to see into future realities and make good choices about which to actualise.
All leaders who want to become great leaders must develop these capacities. We can help.
Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is a critical leadership skill. Here’s how we can help you:
- understand the situation around you
- identify problems, threats, and opportunities, and how important each one is
- identify a range of possible responses and actions and assess which is better than others
- determine what is and is not currently possible for the organisation, and which options best align with its mission and vision
- make logical decisions based on all this information and have a clear decision-making process
- map out (partially, at least) the implications of change for operational people in different parts of the organisation
- clearly and concisely establish how the organisation and its people will benefit from these changes
- work out how to clearly communicate and sell your ideas
- do all this in cooperation with other members of the strategy team, ensuring you all use critical thinking skills, discriminate fact from opinion, create balanced outcomes, and remain on task
And none of that is easy to do and there is no genuine quick fix. But, if you seriously want your executive team to develop these strategy skills, we can guide you to success.