As a leader, imagine having a metaphorical tool at your beck and call that was capable of catalyzing action, focusing the collective energies of your team members and providing a greater sense of purpose to everyone around you.  This tool is strategy and all too often and for varying reasons, this tool is left idle in the bottom of the leadership toolbox, brought out only for special occasions like the annual off site or in preparation for budgeting.  The best tool misapplied is no better than a crude implement.  Unfortunately, strategy as a leadership tool is widely misunderstood and rarely or poorly applied.   

Leading is more than just being the person in charge.  It’s about selecting and developing talent, providing direction and motivation, creating the effective working environment and providing consistent and timely feedback on performance.  The "direction and motivation" component comes directly from the leader’s understanding of the firm’s strategic environment (market forces, competitors, customers) as well as the direction and strategies (goals/actions) that have been selected by an organization’s management.  Strategy is context that gives meaning and purpose to individual roles and group activities and goals.

Most firms and most leaders do a lousy job with strategy. If there is a strategy or strategic process, it is generally relegated to those at higher levels.  In my experience, most firms lack even rudimentary strategy programs and strategic processes.  Take an informal poll in your organization.  Ask people at varying levels what the firm’s strategy is.   Probe further and ask if they understand the major forces affecting the firm’s choice of actions and priorities. In most organizations, once you get below the top layer or two, the typical answer will include a negative head shake or shoulder shrug. I have done this many times, and I confess to not understanding how a group of people that are supposed to be leaders can do such a miserable job communicating and leveraging something that is so powerful and so important.

Lacking the context of strategy, how do individuals make decisions?  How do they prioritize their activities?  How do they establish a mission that propels them forward and that propels those around them or those that report to them?  The fact is they have no substantive basis for any of those activities.  The truth is, they make it up.  They make up proxies, set goals that seem to make sense, but are without direct linkage to strategy execution.  In essence, these strategy-starved employees wander blindly through their days and their tasks, hoping and even thinking that they are doing something important and contributory, but they are never really certain.

Flip this around and the picture is very different.  For example, a mid-level manager that understands an organization’s strategic environment and strategies is able to do the following:

  • Educate his or her team and provide them much-needed context for their collective role in strategy execution.
  • Align individual and team goals and objectives with a firm’s strategic priorities.
  • Say “no” to activities and investments that don’t fit the strategic priorities.
  • Gauge performance based on meaningful measures.
  • Encourage team members to create strategic linkages with other internal project and functional groups.  Armed with the perspective and context of strategy, internal and cross-functional activities have a purpose that drives collaboration and cooperation.
  • Create and provide developmental opportunities for individual contributors and aspiring leaders. 
  • Create a group of strategy-focused individuals constantly listening to customer feedback, gauging competitor moves or evaluating internal programs and processes for strategic fit.

The bottom-line:

The best leaders get the connection between strategy and success.  They understand that they are leading for a purpose—to create value for their organization, and they can only achieve this when they understand and wield strategy as their driving force.  All of the best people habits in the world are worth little to an organization if they are not applied to the pursuit of the right issues and opportunities.  Strategy defines the cause, clarifies the issues, establishes the goals and provides the measurement criteria.  It is the foolish leader that relegates strategy to a once a year event like budgeting.  Strategy is for every day and all of the time.