Welcome to 2008.  It’s time to get back to work, and we might as well start-off with something meaty, substantive and worthy of considerable reflection and perhaps some good debate.  The key question: is your leadership culture and your personal leadership approach starving or fueling your organization?

While some organizations are consistently high performing, the gross majority of firms operate in phases ranging from excitement and growth to malaise and meandering.  If you are growing and changing, that is good, but the trick is how to sustain and even improve.  If you are meandering or worse, declining, the challenge is how to break out of a challenging slide.

Over the course of the next few weeks or months, I am going to develop the concept and benefits of what I describe as Strategy-Fueled Leadership.  Step one in the introduction of this externally aware, results-focused approach to leading, winning in the market and developing others, is recognizing whether your own leadership style and culture are adversely impacting your organization’s performance. 

Somewhere now, there is a leader sitting in her office stressed about the way things are going.  She is tired, frustrated and not clear on what to do to eliminate the seemingly endless firefighting that dictates her daily schedule.  In another office, a mid-level manager is struggling to motivate his team—half of which are looking over the fence at the green grass of competitors that appear to be doing the right things to grow.  At the same time, a founder/CEO who has sacrificed a decade of his life to build his firm is uncertain how to get to the next level and take some risk off the table.  Another professional, the Executive Director of a not-for-profit is struggling with the process of transforming her mission-driven organization into an operationally excellent, business-focused and competitive organization without losing track of the mission. 

I know all of these people, many times over, under different names and sitting behind different desks.  Chances are, you know them too, or you might even be one of these conscientious and capable professionals searching for answers.   

Understanding a Firm’s Strategy Culture is Critical to Planning for Improvements

Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to observe and participate in the strategy process in good and bad situations.  I’ve watched as executives have struggled to articulate their business strategy to their own employees and I’ve seen executives stammer and stutter in front of a board of directors as they attempt to defend their plan to grow the business.  I’ve listened to visionary statements passed off as strategy by charismatic leaders and I’ve watched rooms full of employees glaze over as they are slowly tortured by well-intentioned co-workers subjecting them to an endless barrage of slides outlining the latest strategy.  I’ve watched as strategy books reflecting a year’s worth of work are proudly handed out at employee meetings, only to sit, yellowing and collecting dust on bookshelves until they are tossed into the garbage as part of an office cleaning party.  And last and definitely not least, I’ve observed top executives carefully lock their strategy documents away from the broader organization for fear of information leaking to competitors.  In this case, the strategy did not even leak to the employees supposedly responsible for executing it.  The common denominator in these negative examples is the lack of respect for strategy as a potent leadership tool.  I refer to these organizations as strategy-starved.   

On the positive side of this picture, I’ve seen nearly comatose companies resurrect themselves and go on to dominate markets.  I’ve observed as teams of individuals have learned how to come together to talk about the future of their enterprise and then engage in activities that ultimately transform their business.  I’ve watched as internally focused organizations became acutely aware of the external forces affecting their business and adapted to leverage those forces for growth.  I’ve marveled at small businesses that identified the ways and means to out-innovate and out-flank their competitors to earn superior returns.  And I’ve been amazed to watch while organizations transformed their cultures by instilling a sense of ownership and empowerment, by adopting a new vocabulary and by ensuring that everyone walked in the door every morning with a clear understanding of what they need to do to make a difference for the organization.  The common denominator in these very positive situations is the recognition that leadership and leading go hand in hand with strategy and vice-versa.   I reference these organizations as strategy-fueled.

The contrast between the two styles of organizations described above (strategy-starved and strategy-fueled) is stark.  I certainly know which one I would prefer to work for or invest in with my own money.   Unfortunately, experience indicates that many organizations fall into  the strategy-starved category.  They lack a mature perspective on strategy, and the leadership of the firm tends to be preoccupied with the urgent day-to-day tasks of firefighting, at the expense of orchestrating employees to look forward and act.

Understanding Your Strategy Environment:

Like anything else, recognition is the first step to repair.  Here are some straightforward diagnostic questions that will provide a good indication on your firm’s relative maturity around strategy and whether your leadership team is properly leveraging strategy as a tool to drive performance.

Ten Questions to Help Determine Whether Your Firm is Strategy-Fueled or Strategy-Starved

  1. Is there a visible process for developing and refreshing the firm’s strategies?
  2. If asked, can every employee describe the firm’s overarching strategy?
  3. Do all employees understand how the firm is performing against key strategy objectives?
  4. Can all employees see a linkage between their individual goals and the firm’s goals?
  5. Are all employees involved in some form of regular meetings to review team and organization execution?
  6. Is input from employees on improving performance actively solicited and listened to?
  7. Is it clear to everyone the roles that the executives have in coaching and facilitating strategy evolution and execution?
  8. Are employees comfortable in offering ideas contrary to executive perspectives?
  9. Are there visible signs of accountability for performance against key strategy objectives?
  10. Does most teamwork take place in cross-functional groups?       

The goal of course is to be able to answer all questions in the affirmative.   Print or transcribe the list, and hand these out at your next management or staff meeting as an informal tool to see what people think about your strategy-culture.  Chances are if people answer "No" to questions one or two, the balance of the questions will be "No" as well. 

If you more closely resemble the "strategy-starved" organization, here’s a little solace.  You are not alone, and your situation, while dire, may not be critical. 

Stay tuned as I develop (hopefully with input from you) the ideas and approaches that the Strategy-Fueled Leader must take to turn the negative survey answers to the affirmative and to start a performance-focused, cultural revolution.