[Random Musings] Leaders Are Less Strategic Than They Think

Most leaders tend to overestimate their strategic orientation. Until they seek feedback from their manager, or are provided the report from a 360 Assessment.

While the natural tendency is to deny or explain away this gap between how they see themselves and how others perceive them, eventually they understand that they need to work on being, and being seen as more strategic.

To be clear, the reason they come across as less strategic is rarely due to a lack of intent, or even skills - most have the training, experience, as well as a robust self-image of being strategic thinkers.

Instead, when we dig deeper, and try and understand what prevents them from thinking and acting more strategically, we see a few common themes

Here are some common blockers to thinking and acting strategically...

Lack of time

Leaders find that all their time is taken up in managing current activities, attending countless meetings, fire fighting, backtracking, and addressing consequences of past decisions. 

Where is the time for thinking about the future?

Lack of clear priorities

Most leaders find themselves accountable or responsible for a large number of organizational goals and initiatives. This, over and above the operating results that they accountable for. 

With so much on their plate, even when they are able to find time, leaders find it difficult to decide what to focus on.

Lack of alignment 

An open secret in strategy consulting circles is the fact that in most organizations, even the top team lacks a common understanding of what the key priorities are. Further down the organization, this lack of strategic alignment is further magnified, and it is not uncommon to see teams and individuals working at cross-purposes. 

With this lack of alignment, even when a leader decides to narrow their focus and work on a few key priorities, they often find themselves out of sync with what key stakeholders deem important.

With blockers such as lack of time, lack of priorities, and lack of strategic alignment, working to develop one's strategic orientation is less about learning new skills, and more about addressing these blockers and creating space to think and act strategically. 

Some of the common areas that leaders end up working on include:

• Taking a hard look at their own routine, and that of their team, to identify opportunities for elimination, simplification, automation, delegation or deferral of activities, so that they can create more time - which can then be used for thinking strategically.
• Working with key stakeholders to agree/reduce the number of "key priorities", or at least agreeing on sequencing/spacing them out, so that the number of priorities at any given time is manageable.
• Constantly communicating (up/down/laterally) and clarifying priorities, and assigning accountability to specific individuals within the team, and to ensure that everyone is clear what is expected of them
• Using the space created to routinely work on thinking about the future, using simple yet effective frameworks and tools, to ensure they are thinking broadly and strategically.
• Constantly seeking feedback from key stakeholders on how they are doing. This engagement ensures they have ideas and perspectives that help in their development, and also shapes the perception of the stakeholders on the leader's strategic orientation.

What are some other blockers that hold you back from being as strategic as you can/wish to be?