strategic thinking Archives

Leadership is a dying art in the world today. The great leaders of the past are found few-and-far between these days. There are some that have been fairly successful leaders that have rose to an iconic status, but have they been truly great leaders or just really successful at running something?

Often there is contention between the skills that a leader needs and what a manager needs. I believe, if you’re not a good leader, you won’t be a good manager, and if you’re not a good manager, you won’t be a good leader. It is my contention that those who apply both of these talents expertly demonstrate what I call, “Leaderment^SM.” This is the expert combination of Leadership and Management together.

Leaders Think Strategically All the Time.

Great leaders don’t hold strategic planning sessions once a year; great leaders think strategically all the time. They still hold strategic planning sessions annually and more than not, once a quarter. Because great leaders know that their leadership team doesn’t always think strategically and they have to set aside time for them to think as the leader does. But the leader–a true leader–is always mentally in the strategy realm.

This doesn’t mean that they are out-of-touch with reality. If you understand strategy, then you then know it’s more than just visions and big ideas…it’s tactics and actions that make these things happen.

I don’t care who you talk to, everyone has a different definition of strategy. It becomes even more difficult when you through in terms like strategic plan, strategic planning, strategic mindset, strategic, thinking, etc.

I’m sure I’ll get a lot of comments from “strategy experts” on this, but for this blog, thinking strategically, means you think always about your Mission Vision, Values, Goals, Objectives, and Action Plans–your thinking takes the form of a strategic plan. To Develop the Leader Within, you must learn how to think like a leader–this is a skill all managers and leaders should develop.

“Stuff” happens at the Tactical-level with whatever you do. This is where the day-to-day activities take place. We “live” here mentally all the time. That’s because it’s what’s front of our nose’s day-in and day-out. It is very hard for managers and leaders to step out of this tactical-level because they feel that if they take the time to focus elsewhere, they will lose focus on the operation and things will fail. This is human nature.

Normally, managers and leaders are promoted to the their position because they showed skill at the Tactical-level as an employee. This sent a message to their leadership that they might be good managers and leaders. This doesn’t always prove to be true, but mainly this is because the newly promoted person can’t get their mind out of the tactical-level. Normally, they are too worried that mistakes will happen and the mission will fail, so they stay overly focused on the day-to-day. This often leads to micro-management of the people and frustrates everyone.

Focusing on the Tactical-level is a failure of effective Leaderment^SM.

Above the Tactical-level is the Operational-level. Here, long-range objectives become your daily bread. Almost everything in the Operational-level falls into the form of projects and programs. For definition sake, projects are duration-based activities–in other words they have a beginning and an end. Programs run for a long time–they may end at some point, but they last a long while. Many employees initially have trouble transitioning from the Tactical to Operational levels because they still think day-to-day. Non-exempt employees are used to being hourly and when they move to exempt status and find themselves in the Operational-level, they often have trouble reacting.

Formerly non-exempt employees tend to move in one of two directions, which defines their behaviors for the future.

They treat everything as a day-to-day task. Thus, they can’t think in long-term projects and programs. They feel overwhelmed because they feel that they can never get their work done. This is frustrating to them and their managers because often they are shying away from long-term necessary work and focusing on things they can get done during the day. They look at their day as a eight-hour schedule and see what they can accomplish in that time frame.
They become workaholics that put in excessively long hours to try to get long-term tasks done quickly. Their focus is to get everything on their plate off their plate as quickly as possible. Thus they stay late to work on a project and push things through. They’re often not extremely collaborative on their projects, because others don’t move at their pace. Their management tends to reward these “high performers,” but the employee burns out and eventually gets frustrated because no matter how hard they work, the work never seems to get done.

Neither of these behaviors at the Operational-level are desirable. Focusing on the Operational-level is a failure of effective Leaderment^SM.

Then we have those that literally live in Strategy Land. They’re constantly dreaming up things to do, directions to head, and brand new ideas. They’re the big thinkers and the dreamers and we’ve all worked with and for them. Life is easy for them, because they never get their hands dirty. They’re the ones pushing new projects and programs to the Operational-level that fit the purpose of the day and move with the winds of change. Managers and employees who exist and operate at the Tactical-level never know what direction the organization is heading, so they burrow in and simply focus on the job.

Leaders that live in the Land of Strategy find themselves very frustrated that all their grand ideas never seem to get accomplished, especially in the time frames they envisioned them occurring. They become more-and-more impatient and they tend to push their employees beyond their limits. They stress the entire organization and frustrate even the hardest and most dedicated workers.

Focusing on the Strategic-level is a failure of effective Leaderment^SM.

So, if thinking strategic, operational, or tactical is a failure of effective Leaderment^SM, how should a Leader think?

Leaders Think Strategically all the time…

This doesn’t mean they live in Strategy Land…this means they think all the time like their strategic plan. Refer to the image below:

All Leaders and Managers, regardless of what level they work at, should apply Strategic Thinking every day. When you think strategically, everything you do starts to change. This means that you are always considering all three levels every day and with every decision.

Strategic Thinkers ground themselves in the values, principles, mission, and vision of the organization–regardless if they came up with them or not. They are constantly evaluating every decision to ensure it fits within the values and principles, is it part of the mission of what they should be doing, and does it move the organization toward the vision.

Strategic Thinkers understand that nothing–I repeat NOTHING–happens at the Strategic-level outside of creating direction. Things do not get done at the Strategic-level and if they think they will, they’re simply fooling themselves. If you are waiting for something “strategic” to happen, then you’re going to wait a long time. Things happen at the Tactical-level.

Strategic Thinkers ensure that their programs are aligned to the strategy of the organization. Programs are long-term and very lasting, thus they should be 100% aligned with the mission. Programs do not support the vision–I know that may surprise you, but they don’t. Strategic Objectives, which are aligned to Strategic Goals, take the form of Projects. Operational Projects, which are temporary in nature, should be primarily designed to evolve Operational Programs to move the organization toward its vision.

Projects are not always 100% aligned to the mission and vision of the organization, but for the most part they should be. Occasionally, you might have to do something that simply doesn’t move the strategic needle.

Strategic Thinkers know that this means that Programs are mission-focused and Projects are vision-focused. Thus, Strategic Thinkers don’t live in Strategy Land pushing down new idea after new idea. They ensure the programs running in the organization support the mission 100%. They also ensure organizational Projects are designed to move the organization’s Programs toward the vision. If something isn’t supporting the strategic plan of the organization, it must be questioned.

At the Tactical-level, Strategic Thinkers know this is where the real work gets done. However, there are two types of tactical work–Program and Project. Understanding this helps those who operate at the Tactical-level connect to the mission. Also, understanding this helps those that operate at the Operational-level better focus on how their day-to-day actions affect the bigger picture and thus relieves a lot of stress and frustration.

Additionally, Strategic Thinkers understand that the act of strategic planning is a tactical activity that should operate within an operational program–in other words, organizational strategic thinking is a strategic program that should always exist. The problem is that it seldom does.

If you work at the day-to-day Tactical-level, your actions exist within a Program and sometimes they support a Project designed to evolve a Program. Just thinking this way fully aligns what you do every day to the strategy. If what you’re doing every day doesn’t support this, ask yourself why.

If your mind exists in one level–strategic, operational, or tactical–then you will fail to achieve effective Leaderment^SM. No matter where you operate, you must always think strategically–think like a leader. Following this guidance will build your competence in the Leaderment^SM Youniversity^SM and prepare you for greater challenges.

When you think of great leaders think about what styles and concepts of Leaderment^SM they employed. What did they do that was so effective…that propelled the masses under them to great things. As we can see, these styles vary in application, but an effective leader and manager should understand and apply all traits in a combined approach as appropriate.

Leaderment^SM and Youniversity^SM are service marks of Crosscutter Enterprises

Strategic planning, as a structured and systematic process, is successful when it is leader-led and overcomes the five reasons 70% of all strategies fail. Learn how to see your plan through to success. The strategic planning process is where leaders of an organization establish the vision of the organization’s future and then develop and implement the actions necessary to achieve that future. This article expands on the strategic planning concepts addressed in Think Big, Take Small Steps and is designed to help you achieve success in your strategic planning process.

“There is No Box” When it Comes to Strategic Planning.

Have you ever read the book, “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There?” Basically, the premise of that book is that your current actions and thinking that have moved you to where you are today, will not be the same actions and thoughts you will need to get you to where you want to go in the future. Thus, in strategic planning, doing things and thinking the same way won’t help you achieve your vision.

Everything up to this point in the How to Conduct an Organizational Assessment section of my Think Big, Take Small Steps blog has been designed to feed new thoughts for leaders to consider when designing a new strategy. Let’s review the topics over the last several weeks and see how they are feeding new and innovative thought processes when it comes to strategic planning:

Understanding the Different Assessment Tools. The concept of this blog was to open your thought-aperture to new tool ideas to assess your organization prior to actually sitting down and conducting any strategic planning.
Assessing Your Organization Using the Military’s DOTMLPF – FREE Assessment. This blog was dedicated to examining a whole new way of conducting a full-blown organizational assessment that would be extremely complete.
The Importance of a Stakeholder Assessment. This assessment approach, helps you understand who your crucial stakeholders are that are affected by your organization and will be affected by your strategic plan.
Are You Ready for Change? Understanding the change readiness of your stakeholders helps prepare yourself for a successful strategic plan implementation and informs the strategic plan development.
The Robust SWOT Assessment. I provided a much deeper understanding of this relatively confusing tool and explained how it’s more an assessment than a analysis as its commonly called.
Application of Scenario Planning in Strategic Planning. Last week, I rounded out the tools with a deeper look at scenario planning and how it can be used to provide a new way to look at your organization and how to get leaders to examine some of the warts that they normally overlook.

All of these different blogs were designed to spur innovative thought around the strategic planning process–specifically when assessing an organization. In my first blog, I said, “If a plan lacks focus on fixing organizational problems and overcoming barriers to the organization’s vision it is not built on the realities of the environment impacting the organization.” A complete and proper organizational assessment is the first of five ways to ensure your strategic plan will be successful.

However, the last seven blogs have really been focused on the as-is organization–what’s currently going on. Aside from the Opportunities and Threats parts of the SWOT, we’ve done little to think about the future environment. Now is the time, before you bring leaders into a room to facilitate strategic discussion, you need to think outside the box about what the future could look like.

In this case, I’m recommending you throw away the box!

In the next phase of strategic planning, you’re going to bring leaders into an offsite (or onsite if that works for you) and you want to be as prepared as possible for that event. Thus, you want to do some future vision thinking of your own prior to that event. Leaders have limited time and many of them don’t designate a lot of their time to strategic thought anyway (it’s a fact of life). So, make sure you are fully armed when they walk into that room.

This is how you provide some innovative thought to the organizational assessment.

Sit down with your newly created SWOT Assessment–specifically the TIPSs that I explained in my previous blog. If you have a small team helping you, then you can do this as a brainstorming session. Write one of the TIPS on the top of a piece of paper–butcher block if you are brainstorming as a group.
Spend 30 minutes simply writing down any ideas that come to mind around how you would leverage and/or solve to that TIPS.
After 30 minutes, reread the ideas and look for a possible thread of reasoning that could be formulated into an objective for an organization. Write that down at the bottom of the page.
Move onto the next TIPS and continue until you have gone through every TIPS in a similar manner.
Then transcribe the single threads down on a separate sheet and look for ways these support each other or can be combined. Write down your final thoughts.

This idea generation is very helpful for you to plan out your strategic planning session. If you find some big problem or challenge that the organization needs to come to grips with that comes out of this exercise, then you can appropriately plan your offsite to address it.

For example, I have worked with a few organizations that have issues with properly defined roles and responsibilities. In order to better understand the issue the organization was faced with, I planned, in a specific session, the listing out of roles and responsibilities, doing a RACI diagram, or other similar type sessions.

You might also discover through your envisioning that the leadership, or the organization as a whole, needs more education on something critical to the success of your strategic plan. This could lead you to hold some type of just-in-time training event or exercise or to bring in a specific guest speaker to enlighten the leadership.

What if you discovered that the leadership team itself is dysfunctional? This would feed the need to hold some type of team building event in correlation with the strategic planning session. This could even drive the location of the offsite. You might use some type of personality assessment tool (e.g., Meyers Briggs) with the leadership team to get them to think better about how to work together.

Perhaps you have stumbled across a whole new opportunity for the organization that the leadership hasn’t even realized. You might want to plan a tour prior to the strategic planning offsite to expose the leaders to this opportunity to get them thinking about it.

The purpose of providing this line of innovative thought prior to the strategic planning event is to ensure you get the most value out of the event itself. I’ve worked with a leadership team that didn’t even understand what strategic planning was. The first thing we did was an awareness session on strategic planning. I’ve also worked with an organization whose key leader really liked the book, “Good to Great.” So, we had all the leaders on the team read the book and we held sessions where different leaders facilitated discussion sessions around concepts from the book.

Don’t think about strategic planning as simply bringing leaders into a conference room and coming up with a mission and vision statement. Strategic Planning is a thoughtful activity that leaders embark on to understand their as-is, envision the to-be, and develop new ideas to get there. Doing the same thing that they’re doing today won’t get them there. Your job in the organizational assessment phase is to ensure the right thoughts are occurring during the time you have all the leaders gathered together to think and act strategically.

So, 70% of all plans fail to some level; however, by following these guidelines you can help ensure your strategic plan will be one of the 30% successes that everyone reads about.

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Posts tagged strategic thinking

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Applying Innovative Thinking in Strategic Planning