Leadership Overview

Successful strategy development and planning begins with leadership. Leadership isn’t necessarily about who’s on top. It’s about who instigates the strategic direction of the organization and inspires a strength of conviction in the people in the organization who will pursue that direction. Two analogies help to illustrate this point: first, if we model the organization as an oyster, then leadership is the grain of sand that inspires the oyster to produce a pearl; second, if we model the organization as a huge, ocean-going ship, then leadership is the trim tab on the rudder. It doesn’t steer the ship itself, but it motivates the steering action to occur.

In A Force for Change - How Leadership Differs from Management (and several of his other books) Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter has done an outstanding job of differentiating leadership from management. Kotter’s extensive research indicates that the attributes that define a great leader are almost diametrically opposed to the attributes that define a great manager, and rarely does one individual excel in both dimensions. This should come as no surprise, since a leader’s impetus is to drive change and a manager’s interest is to keep things under control. Kotter has pointed to this dichotomy as the reason why many of the most successful organizations have both a senior-level leader and a senior-level manager who work closely together.

The prevalence of managers, as opposed to leaders, running corporate America today is the direct result of the hierarchical bureaucracy being the dominant organizational form for the last century and a half. The dominance of the hierarchical bureaucracy has led to a situation where most organizations are run by eminently capable managers who have been selected for their management skills first, and their leadership skills second. After many generations of this continued selection based first on management ability, it is no surprise that most long-lived organizations have individuals “on top” who have very few real leadership capabilities. The organizations themselves have become immune to the efforts of real leaders, systematically frustrating them to the point of departure.

In the face of global and asymmetric competition, expecting well-intentioned and very successful managers to create breakthrough strategy and plans is as mean-spirited as it is foolish. Fortunately, many of these managers are wise enough to recognize that they need some assistance in this area. Frequently, they engage management consultants to help them with their strategy development and planning. Most management consultants, believing they know more about management than the managers, frequently “do it for” the managers, or, worse yet, “do it to” them, creating so-called strategy and plans that the organization will never implement. What these managers really need is some help with developing greater leadership skills within their own organization. They and their organizations would benefit most from the assistance of a leadership adviser who will work with them and their organization to cultivate the leadership capabilities required to create and maintain their own, unique strategy and plans to compete effectively in the rapidly changing world.

For new or transforming organizations, a new organizational form is emerging that should help foster greater leadership capabilities. Synchronistic forces are driving significant changes in decision-making and action taking across all areas of the Government/Military, Commercial Business, Healthcare and Education. The complexity of “contemporary situations” (military actions, terrorist threats, natural disasters, epidemics, global competition, etc.), coupled with the pursuit of “more optimal” outcomes, is motivating a sudden and dramatic shift from hierarchical decision structures to increased use of more collaborative, multi-disciplinary and ad hoc decision and action models, and emergence of an effervescent, “networked” organizational form named the “ad-hocracy” by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock in 1970, and significantly developed by Henry Mintzberg in The Structuring of Organizations in 1976. The networked form means that there is no top to rise to, and the effervescent coming into being and then deconstructing means that the organization must work quickly, effectively and efficiently to accomplish its mission, and then disband. This provides a superior environment for the development of real leaders and real leadership.

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Leadership Team

A BOLD Strategy leadership team should begin with one or more people in the organization who are widely recognized as constructive challengers of the status quo. In selecting among equals, those who demonstrate a greater passion for the future prospects and success of the organization should be selected and encouraged to provoke the creation of a BOLD Strategy®. The senior-most executive (CEO, Chairman of the Board, etc.) must visibly (both publicly and privately) support the instigator(s) by actively participating in the various processes and by committing to include greater demonstration of leadership qualities in future advancement and compensation processes. Additional resources such as an experienced technographer (skilled in the application of technology to support collaborative work), an administrative support person and necessary funding must be provided. An experienced leadership advisor can add significant value to the team by providing coaching, methods, tools and experience that the team might not otherwise possess.

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Leadership Processes

Provoke the organization to engage in the strategy and planning processes

• Integrate participation in strategy and planning with overall leadership selection and development
• Identify the underlying assumptions of the status quo
• Identify and communicate external trends and events that threaten the status quo
• Visualize the consequences of the organization’s failure to change

Organize and orchestrate the strategy and planning processes

• Select the most appropriate methods to be used
• Identify, engage and educate necessary participants in the respective processes
• Maintain current and secure strategy and planning information
• Communicate planned activities, progress and results appropriately to all stakeholders
• Prepare for, arrange and provide necessary follow-up for all related activities
• Measure and improve the processes and methods used

Establish the strategy and plan as the organization’s foundation

• Visualize the strategy and plan
• Certify understanding, buy-in and commitment from all necessary constituents
• Make horizontal and vertical linkages visible
• Use the strategy and plan as the context for monitoring and reporting progress, results and status appropriately to the various stakeholders
• Establish a visible, integrated prioritization model for any and all organizational activities
• Challenge the legitimacy of activities not sufficiently connected to the strategy and plan
• Recognize, celebrate and reward for superior progress to plan (horizontal) and superior teamwork to plan (vertical)

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