Strategic Leadership: The Essentials For a Successful Business story

Nathan Rothschild one of the greatest British bankers once said that great fortunes are made when cannonballs fall in the harbor not when violin plays in the Ballroom. What this sentiment meant was that the more unpredictable the business environment is, the greater the opportunity to make fortunes. However, this is only possible if you have the necessary skills to capitalize the opportunity. Therefore, it is necessary to have not only the operational skills to maintain the status quo but also strategic leadership skills to solve complex problems.

Take a minute and think about a successful business story. It is almost impossible not to hear stories of great leaders who inspired their teams towards the realization of that particular success story. Similarly, several business failure have always been associated with failed leadership. Therefore, it is important to note that in the corporate and in every sector of the society, everything rises and falls on leadership.

A fun fact is that strategic leadership is a skill that one does not accrue naturally. You have to learn and educate yourself on the characteristics of the greatest leader you espouse of yourself.

Study conducted on 6000 senior executives in 2015 by PWC revealed how pervasive the shortfall of strategic leadership is. Respondents who were these senior executives were asked a series of questions and their answers revealed their leadership experience. As such, only 8 percent of the respondents turned out to be strategic leaders or leaders who were geared towards effective transformation of their companies and firms. Noteworthy is the fact that a similar research was conducted in 2005 and out of more than 5000 senior executives only 7 percent proved to be strategic in their leadership. This means that despite the technological development and dynamics in different operations of different firms and companies, the development of strategic leadership has barely moved by one percent.

Interestingly, this study suggests that strategic leaders are more likely to be women (10 percent against 7 percent men). Consequently, the number of strategic leaders increases with age — the highest number of strategic leaders among the respondents are 45 years and above. It is important to note that these strategic leaders share common traits. Some of these traits will be subsequently discussed below.

1. Devolution of Power

The success of any business is solely dependent on the practice of both the executives and the ordinary employees. In order to practice your skill, you need a relative amount of autonomy and confidence. Therefore, the top leaders such as the CEOs and Chairpersons of the Boards should devolved power downward and across the organization and the firms. The devolution of power in a company leads to the empowerment of employees at all level to make decisions. Furthermore, the devolution of power increases collective intelligence, adaptability and resilience of organization by harnessing wisdom of those outside the traditional decision-making hierarchy.

2. Transparency

Transparency fosters conversation about moving of information and the improvement of everyday practices. When productivity slows down that becomes the best opportunity to implement change. To implement change team effort is a necessary requirement for the success of the same since it requires people to talk openly and honestly of the possible mistakes leading to slowed productivity. However, if the information is concealed, the temptation to manipulate data to suggest otherwise increases. Therefore, it is crucial for information to flow transparently in the organization.

3. Listening

“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would have rather talked,” said Mark Twain. While listening may seem relatively simple, it can prove impossible to do so in the middle of a busy day. Nevertheless, a strategic leader takes time to listen to the concerns and the ideas of their employees. The realization by employees that their ideas and concerns are heard and considered helps in building their morale and improving the organization. Therefore, a leader who practices the art of listening gains massively.

4. Fail Test

Many a times a company may encourage employees to learn from their errors. However, that works well until an actual failure leading to massive genuine loss occurs. Whenever that happens, the organization’s leadership is quick to find who is culpable of the failure. Noteworthy is the fact that big firms and companies find it unacceptable for employees to fail in their tasks. Those who fail often than not suffer in terms of promotion or reward if not worse. However, as a leader you need to enshrine acceptance of failure and willingness to admit failure early in the practices of the firm. Strategic leaders do not only learn from efforts that succeed but also recognize the type of failure that can turn into success. Furthermore, they also need to learn to recover from failures and try to revive the failed ventures again. Honda is a classical epitome of an enterprise that has incorporated fail test in its system.