One of the things that I truly love about this time we are living and working through is the front-row seats that we all have to some fascinating experiments in strategy. Things happen so quickly and with such widespread coverage in today’s world, that it often looks and feels like a strategist’s living laboratory on Miracle Gro.

A quick scan of the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on my remarkable e-book reader, Kindle, indicates that Google Plans to Launch an Operating System for PCs and that Kodak’s CEO is Betting Big on Printers. Take a second and comprehend the strategy issues and implications of that last sentence. At least two out of three are staggering (Kindle and Google) and one is either the last gasp of a dying giant or a brilliant move to disrupt an entrenched industry.

There’s more:

As a consumer, I’m in the process of switching phone service providers for two of my family members and the one that I’m moving to cannot get the newest iphone in under a week. Sold out.

Just yesterday, my oldest son approached me about a new application for the iPhone that converts it to a true navigation device like those we buy in our cars from Garmin and Tom Tom and others. Hmmm, wonder how that meeting is going inside those device makers.

We live in an era where the platform is King. Think iTunes and the remarkable and industry-disrupting ecosystem that has sprung up around it. Consider Twitter and how it has revolutionized interactions and network building and how it supported a near-revolution in Iran.

The Three Legged Stool of the Emerging Leader/Senior Contributor:

I make no secret about my belief that emerging leaders…the executives and senior contributors of tomorrow must develop remarkable competence in three areas: leadership, strategy and communication.

Effective communication skills can be taught and with practice mastered. Learning to lead is difficult, and experience is the only teacher, but individuals armed with good philosophical underpinnings and supported by good mentoring and feedback can develop and improve their leadership skills.

The remaining leg: developing a sense of strategy and ultimately developing the ability to see and pursue strategic vectors is the most difficult to cultivate. It’s abstract, it’s creative, it’s often risky and there is little in the way of developmental support for emerging strategists.

Business schools tend to treat strategy as history lessons (cases) or as a sterile simulation game. Both are interesting and even fun, but of little use in my opinion in fostering the type of thinking, experimentation and action that leads to winning strategies.

The strategy events and processes inside corporations are often so dysfunctional and poorly managed that an invitation to be involved can seem like a ticket to the county lock-up. The best outcome is getting out.

Guidance for the Emerging Leader on Developing a Sense of Strategy:

While I’ll stop short of offering a “how to” prescription on developing as a strategist, there are certainly some actions and steps that an individual can take to increase their strategic awareness.

  • Study and monitor the many strategic experiments occurring in real-time right in front of you. Is the Kindle the spark that rewrites the publishing business, like iTunes was to the music business? Can a floundering old giant regain its footing on a technology that consumes resources in the electronic and green era? Is Google’s move to an operating system brilliance, arrogance or just plain futile in a Microsoft dominated world? And for that matter, can Microsoft…the strategy giant of two decades ago reinvent itself?
  • Think about your business and your products in the context of the most compelling and uncertain experiments occurring in front of you. Do you have a mini-platform option in your industry? If you truly understood your customers needs, what business and products would you create from scratch?
  • Quit thinking about your competitors from a mimicking mind-set. In fact, quit preoccupying on their every move. It’s healthy to monitor but it’s better and even to battle, but save some gray matter for rethinking the business in a manner that ensures your competitor is obsolete.
  • Beware the Innovator’s Dilemma. If you don’t know what that is, read the book!
  • In addition to Innovator’s Dilemma, read: Tuned-In and Inside the Tornado and Crossing the Chasm. You could do much, much worse than base your strategic thinking on the principles espoused in these great works.
  • Get involved in shaping, executing and monitoring strategy in your area of influence.
  • Ask questions of those around you to better understand your firm’s situation in the marketplace and its strategic objectives.
  • Work hard to ensure that your activities connect to the firm’s core strategies.

The Bottom-Line:

The world and the workplace are filled with people going through the motions, taking orders and executing and acting without really thinking. Strategists on the other hand are constantly striving to connect ideas and patterns to needs and value creating activities. Great leaders have a strong sense of strategy. Take responsibility for developing your sense of strategy and for supporting that development in others. You might just find that life and work are a lot more fun and rewarding this way.