Strategic Leadership

Leadership is an important function that is responsible for formulation, communication and execution of strategies in every organization, company or state.  In all these phases, the leader should connect to ground reality, assess the status quo, then drive the change and take feedback. Most organizations have leaders sitting at top making decisions that impact each staff but barely understand them, thus leading to badly devised strategies or good strategies that are executed bad.

Formulation:

Any leader who is not connected to the ground will be bound to fail in his strategy, as he would have designed something that may not fit the situation. We are in a complex business scenario where off the shelf strategies wont work well. Leadership trying to copy strategy from successful companies are doing at their peril.  In order to device and design  strategy a leader should have a profound understanding of the situation, strengths and weaknesses of the people and the competition among others.

Communication:

Success of any strategy depends on appropriate communication of actions required for the strategic outcome. Communication of the actions forms prime precursor to its execution. A well communicated strategic actions derive much more benefits as the ground staff understand and stand committed to the strategy.  Any strategic action enforced on the staff with out adequate communication, will inevitably lead to mixed outcomes due to lack of clarity on what is expected out of actions.

 Lead the change:

Change doesn't happen automatically, it needs to be lead. Hands-off leaders will suffer the surprise that change did not bring needed results. This is because they have given directions to subordinates and relax in their cabins hoping things to beget results. How ever, in absence of leadership, change will meet resistance and finally dies down before it shows impact.

Feedback :

One potential cause of failure is when the necessary feedback is not fed back to leadership team/leader on what is not working. This happens when the subordinates are scared to give any bad news to boss or when the ‘yes men’ of the boss always filter and moderate the feedback.  This will stop the much needed corrective action to make things work and thus lead to failure path.