Strategic Leadership as We Reflect

Strategic Leadership

As we reflect to the course material, there are several mandates emerge about the strategic leaders. First, the most basic roles in strategic leadership is defining the vision and the direction of business, a construct that serves as the foundation for organization behavior. By clearly setting up the vision of a business, the organizations look for a decision orientation and culture as they relate to choices for business growth, strategy implementation, and business change.

Second mandate that emerges is the idea of the organizational transformation and alignment. To transform an organization into great strategy requires the need for strong leadership quality that can provide a sense of "strategic alignment." Aligning everyone in the organization with strategy is one of the most important things that leaders can do beyond formulating and implementing great strategies. Alignment will make it much easier for the management team to push the organization in the direction of change. Without good alignment with the strategy, every bit of forward motion will be a struggle (Kipp, 1999).

Third mandate that emerges about strategic leaders is on the innovation. Strategic leadership is required to make judgments about the technology innovations, process innovation, and product innovation and provide a strategic direction for sustaining innovations that bring a better product into an established market, low-end disruptions that address over-serviced customers with a lower-cost business model, and new-market disruptions for competition against non-consumption, such as affordable and simpler-to-use products that attract new consumers. Without such in-depth knowledge of innovation, leaders are prone to settle for ineffective innovation and strategic direction.

All of the three mandates are crucial in strategic management and organizational transformation. Because strategic leadership requires championing business growth and long-run profitability, I believe these three mandates become important to create a culture of cooperation and support within the organization. I consider these mandates crucial because one of the most common difficulties companies face in strategic planning is turning their vision into a reality, since there is a breakdown between the formulation and the execution of strategy. Therefore, the leaders job become to endorse new strategy and provide resources for the implementation (Boal, 2000).

Second, most business strategies fail not because the strategy is inherently flawed, but because the strategy is not properly aligned with the organization's leadership or culture.

Therefore, the key tasks of leaders are to create a sense of urgency and ensure that corporate strategy is aligned with the culture of the organization. In this regard, leaders need to understand the need for right people, right processes and right methodologies that are essential for companies to be competitive and grow.

Third, the gist of strategic planning is to inspire people for the innovation in the organization. The formulation phase of strategic planning sets strategic direction, defines the related criteria and frames overall strategies. This formulation involves an external assessment that includes understanding how existing and future innovation could affect strategic businesses, offerings and opportunities. The strategic phase of change management is where determinations are made as to the degree and type of change required to achieve the strategic direction. For instance, the core business processes required to achieve a specific strategic direction may need improvement, redesign or re-engineering.