12 - The Strategic Leadership Keypad
It's suggested that strategic leadership requires "switching between two paradoxical processes" of interacting with people and ideas both inside and outside the organization - in effect, to translate opportunities in the external world into programs and processes that seem to be self-contained within the organization.
There is a draft into sports managers, speaking of leaders in various positions: the field captain who coordinates the players on the field while being an active participant in the game, the coach on the sidelines who periodically interjects guidance based on a broader perspective, the training coach who develops skills in practice long before the game, and the team manager who provides support and resources throughout the season. Each has a different role to play on a different level, which combines strategy and tactics, and which must work in concert. The same applies to various levels of management in an organization.
Going back to the previous paradox, the closer a leader is to the action, the more his perspective becomes tactical rather than strategic - but losing the strategic view makes tactical decisions less effective. Meanwhile, a further a leader is from the action, the more he loses sight of the actions that will have to be undertaken to achieve loftier goals.
The authors use a keypad as a metaphor for the various tasks involved to ensure strategy and tactics remain aligned.
Key 1: Linking with the Outside
According to traditional theory, the senior executive staff was seen as the link between the internal world of the company and the external world of other stakeholders - i.e., they were the face of the firm to investors, the public, and the industry, all of whom had demands or expectations of the firm. However, according to traditional practices executives serve less as a link and more of a barrier, preventing information from outside the organization from getting inside and vice-versa, except by means of a controlled process.
Research carried out (by some anonymous source) in the late 1990s indicated many firms are neglectful of stakeholder relationships - and worse, those who made sporadic and haphazard attempts to communicate to stakeholders performed more poorly than those who ignored them altogether.
Customers are also considered to be an external group. Some firms can thrive while maintaining a distance from their stakeholders: consider that Steve Jobs of apple was disdainful of market research, expressing that an innovative product does not result from catering to public opinion (EN: legions of fiercely loyal customers and a soaring stock price seem to justify this position). Meanwhile, other firms do extensive research. Proctor and Gamble does extensive market research and involves customers in the product design process, recognizing that the "moments of truth" occur when a customer chooses their product at a store and uses it at home - if it fails to meet their expectation, the company has failed in its mission.
(EN: This brief treatment seems unsatisfactory, but there are other authors who more fully explore the gamut of relationships between firms and stakeholder groups - investors, customers, partners, competitors, regulators, and the like. Possibly all that's important in the present book is a superficial treatment - and to suggest that the trend is having more frequent and better orchestrated contacts with various external audiences by individuals who are lower in the org chart.)
Key 2: Developing the Overarching Vision
The vision of a firm is a short phrase that expresses the core of the company's mission. Consider Bose corporation's slogan of "Better sound through research" or Nokia's "Connecting people" - these short phrases enable external audiences to understand what the firm means to achieve, and suggests what internal audiences must help to work toward.
The authors comment, as many have, on the boilerplate text many firms publish in annual reports that are verbose yet convey no clear meaning.
More importantly, mottoes and slogans are evocative rather than prescriptive - they are only as specific as they need to be, and provide people a great deal of latitude in developing plans to accomplish the goal.
The authors then take a weird turn, to drawing parallels between a director of a theatrical production and the director of a corporation: both provide vision and guidance and they coordinate and support, but they must refrain to be too overbearing if the actors are to contribute their skills to the performance. Also, while the director does a lot of coaching in rehearsals, he must ultimately trust in the efforts of many people to do their parts without his constant oversight when the performance takes place. Chasing the metaphor further, a director must assert his vision as well - he does not merely assemble a group of people (actors, lighting, music, etc.) and let everyone do their thing. He must coordinate and organize it toward a common outcome.
Many industries start out in chaos before they become established. Consider that today's giant computer companies started out as a few nerds working in someone's garage. But of course, there were garages full of nerds everywhere, and the difference is that the few that succeeded stumbled upon a common vision that everyone got behind, and one of the group stepped up to orchestrate their efforts.
Key 3: Promoting Ideas from Below
Traditionally, people in leadership roles were the only ones who were permitted to think or have ideas - the rest of the organization were merely hands to carry out the work of the leader's mind. This has also changed, and companies have increasingly witnessed great ideas coming from the middle and the front-lines of their firms
In this sense, management provides a filter: not every idea is a good one, and not every good idea is financially sustainable, and even a good and sustainable idea may not be the best use of a firm's resources, given other opportunities that are more supportive of its mission.
However, firms have had a difficult time making the transition of a fully collaborative culture, and some of the main reasons are:
- Mistrust - Employees do not believe that their ideas will be treated with respect and that they will receive appropriate recognition if their contributions come to fruition
- Possessiveness - Those who have ideas expect them to be executed exactly as they envisioned them, and are resistant and resentful of any changes or adaptations that others suggest
- Inertia - Until such time as employees see a number of their peers' ideas being recognized and implemented, there is the sense that the "new" program is a passing fancy.
As an aside, the authors mention the trend toward invisible leadership: the age of electronic communications means that senior managers are no longer visible to their people. Sending out an e-mail gives them the "illusion of connection" in their ability to communicate broadly and frequently, but instead of becoming more familiar and accessible, they seem all the more remote.
The evolution of the "professional" manager - who is academically trained in peripheral skills such as accounting, finance, marketing, and the like but has no competence in the core value-creating activity of the firm into which they enter as management. The schism between the "suits" and the workers is particularly pronounced in entertainment and high-tech companies, where business managers meddle in the work of subordinates who are much more competent.
(EN: This is another superficial swipe at a much deeper topic. The techniques used to manage "knowledge workers" are significantly different to those that are successful at managing drudges - and it's arguable whether the command-and-control methods were even particularly successful in managing drudges.)
Key 4: Strategy Mapping
There follows a bit of a ramble about giving people more guidance than a simple motto and expecting them to figure out how to proceed. Returning to sports metaphors, telling a tem to "go out there and score a lot of points" leaves the players nonplussed and uncertain of what to do, and having only this guidance, a positive outcome is highly unlikely.
From there, the authors extol the value of information graphics - various pictures and sketches that leverage metaphor and symbol to communicate a concept.
Interesting fact: after the civil war, Robert E. Lee became president of Washington College and proposed a school of business that included an emphasis on "drawing," as he found that in his military career, the ability to make a simple sketch to illustrate a plan of attack was far more effective than giving spoken or written orders, and he figured it to be a critical skill for leaders in the civilian sectors. The authors muse about how much better business leadership might be if this plan had come to fruition and business education were more broad-based than it presently is.