Be More Strategic in Business. Diana Thomas
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and motivation to achieve success. A sound vision provides everyone with a clear line of sight to the strategic win. This vision needs to be grounded in the definition of success for your company and business—based on customer and stakeholder expectations. We’ll talk more about how to identify the company’s strategy and success measures, as well as how to craft your vision, in later chapters. But as you define success, be sure to include what satisfaction looks like for your employees, customers, and shareholders (if applicable). Your vision should be a motivating statement—one that’s tied to stakeholders and is a stretch for the organization. Everyone on the team should be able to relate to it, repeat it, confidently and enthusiastically explain it, and more importantly, live it! In fact, the vision statement should be incorporated into your daily language and interactions with others outside of the organization.
2.Define goals and strategies as a road map to success. Once you’ve crafted a motivating vision, define the key goals and strategies needed to bring your vision to life. These become the roadmap to your destination. Identify the critical actions that must be executed to move you along the right path. Leaders and team members should focus on actions that will have the greatest impact on desired results.
3.Have the right players in the right roles. To have the right players in the right roles, you start by hiring the right people. Staff for success by keeping your standards high and hiring the best. They don’t necessarily have all the technical knowledge or fancy credentials, but the right disposition. Look for people who have the right attitude, willingness to be team members, and a desire to learn. Do they reflect the vision and mission for your organization? Are they the role models you want? Will they relate to the work and stick around to see the results? It’s not only much easier to accomplish your goals when you have strong players, it’s downright impossible to accomplish them with weak players. Don’t waste time and effort trying to improve the people who may be strong performers but don’t have the right attitude or lack the willivngness to learn. No matter how much time you sink into them, you can’t force them to truly care about the job at hand or be a team player. Find the right fit for your team. Recruit, hire, train, and develop team players who have the ability and passion to bring your vision to life.
4.Create the best work environment so everyone thrives; celebrate success! Create an environment that allows people to not only do good work, but to thrive as they’re doing it. Ensure workload is broken down into manageable chunks, and then match tasks and projects to the skills of each individual so they can accomplish their best work. People do their best work when they feel comfortable bringing their whole selves (mind, body, and spirit) to work. Take the time to get to know what motivates your team—what jazzes them. Most people have the sense that they work for a person, not for the company, so stay connected with them as individuals. Recognizing and celebrating successes is a strong motivator to keep team members productive and engaged. If you celebrate what you want to see more of, you’ll get it! Ask yourself: “Would you want to report to or work with you?” What’s good about reporting to you? What could be better?
Ask yourself: “Would you want to report to or work with you?”
5.Plan, Do, Study, Act. Winning leaders have a plan. They execute that plan. They learn what was revealed during the plan’s execution, and then they act to make the informed change. Several later chapters will provide in-depth guidance to help you with strategic planning, execution, decision-making, and continual improvement.
6.Measure functional success and focus on continuous improvement. Item one entailed defining your vision of success. But to know if you’re on track along the way—and if/when you achieve success—you need to measure your progress. Establishing regular check-in routines will give you and the team the opportunity to recognize and celebrate progress, which creates energy to keep going forward or make needed course corrections at the right times. These routines also provide the ideal opportunity for feedback—a tremendous gift when given and received in honesty and openness. Set ever higher goals to continually improve the business and to keep your stakeholders delighted.
People may not remember what you say, but they will remember how you make them feel.
Get Ready to Become a Winning Strategic Leader
You’ve probably heard the advice often given to leaders: people may not remember what you say, but they will remember how you make them feel. How do you want people in your organization to feel about you and your team? Your internal team wants a sense of purpose, an understanding of the connection between their work and the organization’s larger picture. When you set your vision, ensure you are creating purposeful work. By helping your team see the way the vision aligns with corporate strategy, you help them see they are working for something bigger than checking items off some to-do list. This same model applies outside of your team, too. Speak frequently about your vision and help others in the company to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Next, we’d like to introduce you to two fictionalized leaders who will appear throughout this book. While they are a conglomeration of people and behaviors we’ve worked with and coached (and sometimes ourselves), any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental.
Taylor
Taylor is a tactical director at a medium-sized company. She excels at accommodating requests from everyone throughout the organization, and she manages her team so that they can quickly accomplish any work brought to them. Her team’s direction shifts as the demand for learning ebbs and flows. She’s a team player, works hard, and is hands-on with her team as much as possible. When invited to strategy meetings, she’s always rushing in at least 5-10 minutes late and brings reams of data in complex spreadsheets. She tends to be long-winded when presenting to the executive board and likes to share her methods for analyzing the data because she thinks it helps her seem credible. Many board members fail to see the relevance of her points and question whether to invite her to future meetings. But she brings donuts from everyone’s favorite local bakery, so it’s hard to cut her from the invite list.
Sam
Sam is a strategic director at the same medium-sized company. She’s focused on the big picture and is always thinking about a desirable and attainable future for the company. She’s able to connect her vision with the company’s vision, and her team understands their own direction. She also shares that vision with everyone she meets throughout the organization. Everyone knows what Sam’s department is up to. Members of the executive board value Sam’s input, and she’s frequently included in strategy sessions. She comes equipped with data that shows how her department is impacting corporate goals. Less strategic leaders in the organization find her intimidating because of her constant focus on the big picture and avoid taking last-minute meetings with her when they don’t have time for ample preparation. Sam is starting to earn a positive reputation in her industry for her thoughtful social media activity, blog posts, magazine contributions, and very popular conference sessions on driving winning results.
Sam and Taylor will help to illustrate the concepts presented in this book; look for them in the coming chapters and decide which archetype suits the needs of your organization.
To start, we will present Taylor and Sam in terms of leadership behaviors. As you learn more about Sam and Taylor, it’s worth noting that we’ve all been Taylor in our careers! The majority of people start their careers in a tactical role, and then at some point need to make the shift to become strategic. Some people, in fact, prefer tactical roles, and that’s okay! It does, however, mean that they aren’t suited for strategic leadership. Sometimes we need characteristics of both (whether found within ourselves or by collaborating with others), but we need to know when it’s the right time to unlock that skill set. As you go through the book, when you find yourself identifying with Taylor over Sam, it should trigger you to take a hard look at your role and what your business needs from you.
Strategic Leadership Behaviors
There are a number of competency models for high-level leaders; we offer a more informal list of traits and behaviors that