Implementing Strategy Develops Leaders

[email protected] 415-516-8433 http://www.accountcaffeine.com San Francisco, CA

Shepherd Consulting LLC strategy implementation for strategic results

DEVELOP LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

BY IMPLEMENTING STRATEGY SUCCESSFULLY

Implementing strategy effectively and efficiently is critical to the success of any business. That direct statement is well understood by all business leaders. What is not always equally understood is that the same corporate processes and procedures employed to ensure a business’ success – call it strategy implementation management -- can also be used to coach and develop essential leadership competencies in staff throughout your organization. Ultimate authority and accountability for strategy implementation resides with the leader of the organization, business or functional unit. That leader has the right and obligation to reach as wide and deep in the organization as necessary to direct, monitor, and, when necessary, micro-manage. The means by which you know closer attention is required are the reins attached to every important function, person, and process that is important to strategic success.

No better opportunity exists for you to take the pulse of your organization at any critical point that you deem necessary.

This paper presents strategy implementation management as an opportunity to develop the leadership competencies of key staff who are responsible for advancing the organization’s priorities and achieving its goals.

Four Categories of Leadership Competencies

Category One: Leading Others

Leading Others involves influencing the attitudes and behaviors of others to maximize their performance and achieve common goals.

• Effective Communications • Influencing Others • Team Building • Mentoring

Category Two: Leading Performance and Change

Meeting the constant challenges of implementing change in the organization requires that leaders apply performance competencies to their daily responsibilities. The six performance competencies in this category enable each leader and the organization to perform at the top of their abilities in any situation. • Customer Focus • Management and Process Improvement • Conflict Management

• Decision-Making and problem •Solving Vision Development • Creativity and Innovation

mailto:[email protected]�

http://www.accountcaffeine.com/�


Category 3: Leading the Organization

Leaders of the organization include you as the CEO, President, Executive Director, CXO, manager and those you are grooming for these positions. Directors, managers and team leaders who are fortunate to report to quality senior executives find good models to follow on their path to future executive leadership.

• Human Resource Management • Strategic Thinking

Category 4: Leading Self

Competencies in this category that strategy implementation management strengthens are:

• Accountability and Responsibility • Aligning and Exhibiting Values

Strategy Implementation Management is a powerful opportunity to develop leadership competencies

Successful strategy implementation is a real-life learning and coaching opportunity that gives management the opportunity to develop leaders AND execute strategy effectively. This opening section is a top-level summary of the full report that follows.

Leading Others Leading others involves working with and influencing others to achieve common goals and increases the capacity of the individual and the team to outperform. Four competencies are particularly developed by successful strategy implementation: • Effective Communications - • Influencing Others • Team Building • Mentoring Effective Communication Leaders express facts and ideas succinctly and logically, facilitate an open exchange of ideas, ask for feedback routinely, and communicate face-to-face whenever possible. They write clear, concise, and organized correspondence and reports. Successful leaders prepare and deliver effective presentations. Competent coaches, supervisors, followers, performance counselors, interviewers, and negotiators, leaders know how to approach many situations to achieve organizational goals. My research, reveals that uncertainty is the primary source of poor strategy implementation.




A reasonable inference is that if the leader (team, department, cross-functional task force) cannot or does not articulate a clear goal and requirements neither will the group. A recommended method of validating the team’s understanding is to simply ask them what their role and goals are. Another - have them write down what you told them and give it back to you. Send back more clarification and ask for their re-statement until they can tell you what you hold them accountable for. When the strategy morphs during implementation to take advantage of new opportunities and methods - repeat this ‘call and response’ cycle with updated changes. Influencing Others Leaders communicate, direct, coach, and delegate, as the situation requires. Successful leaders understand the importance and relevance of professional relationships, develop networks, gain cooperation and commitment from others, build consensus, empower others by sharing power and responsibility, and establish and maintain rapport with key players. Coaching and requiring managers to recognize and experience the power of consensus-building over directives, professional relationships over ‘getting along” or personal grudges. Strategy implementation is an opportunity to break through silos to achieve cross-silo results. Encouraging people to break out of their silo’d work relationships leverages results across the organization - a practice that will increase their contribution in all activities. Team Building Leaders recognize and contribute to group processes; encourage and facilitate cooperation, pride, trust, and group identity; and build commitment, team spirit, and strong relationships. Leaders inspire, guide, and create an environment that motivates others toward goal accomplishment; consider and respond to others’ needs, feelings, and capabilities; and adjust their approach to suit various individuals and situations. Leaders adapt leadership styles to a variety of situations and personify high standards of honesty, integrity, trust, openness, and respect for others by applying these values and styles to daily behavior. Take the opportunity to groom and test future leaders with team leader roles in SIM. Team members build successful team relationships and team strengthening processes. In the implementation process, they develop team dynamics that are valuable and make for an environment that easily leverages the talent - unfettered by the organization chart. Mentoring Drawing on their experience and knowledge, leaders deliberately assist others in developing themselves, provide objective feedback about leadership and career development, and help identify professional potential, strengths, and areas for improvement. Successful leaders identify with the role of mentor to their staff. They have the skill to advise and develop others in the competencies needed to accomplish current and future goals. Leaders seek out mentors for themselves As employees stretch to achieve their responsibilities for SIM, new mentoring opportunities




arise. They now have exposure to new potential mentors. Mentor/mentee relationships last beyond and outside the strategy implementation period. Mentors should see that this role is an expectation of leaders. 2. Leading Performance and Change Leading Performance and Change to meet the constant challenges of implementing change in the organization requires that leaders apply performance competencies to their daily responsibilities. All six of performance competencies enable each leader and the organization to perform at the top of their abilities in any situation. Competencies in this category that strategy implementation management strengthens are: • Customer Focus • Management and Process Improvement • Decision-Making and problem Solving • Conflict Management • Creativity and Innovation • Vision Development and Implementation Customer Focus Leaders know who their internal and external customers are and make every possible effort to discover their customers’ needs and to hear their customers’ voices. Leaders understand the importance of measuring and monitoring the degree to which their customers’ needs are met or exceeded and continually strive to improve that. The customer can be a commercial buyer of product, expertise, service or the beneficiaries of a non-profit. The customer can be another department that consumes the output of a delivering department. For SIM, the customer may be the board of Directors. This speaks to the need for numerical or situation definitions that are clear indicator if not actual target results of the implemented strategy. This focus should be used to align the organization behind implementation both internally and externally with partners, suppliers and customers. Management and Process Improvement Successful leaders demonstrate the ability to plan, organize, and prioritize realistic tasks and responsibilities for themselves and their people. They use goals, milestones, and control mechanisms for projects. Leaders seek, anticipate, and meet customers’ needs—internal and external to achieve quality results. In order to accomplish this, leaders monitor and evaluate progress and outcomes produced by current processes, ensure continuous improvement through periodic assessment, and are committed to improving products, services, and overall customer satisfaction. They effectively manage time and resources to successfully accomplish goals. Strategy implementation itself is a process that must deliver quality results yet, often it is not seen as a process but as a group of related projects. SIM is a recurring process within the year and over multi-year efforts. It encompasses evolving strategy measures, goals and




opportunities. The second year should be more successful than the first and so on as SIM becomes a core competency adding more value to the company each and every subsequent year. Decision-making and Problem Solving Successful leaders are able to isolate high-importance issues, analyze pertinent information, and involve others in decisions that affect them, generate promising solutions, and consistently render judgments with lasting, positive impact. Leaders identify and analyze problems; use facts, input from others, and sound reasoning to reach conclusions; explore various alternative solutions; distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information; perceive the impact and implications of decisions; and commit to action, even in uncertain situations, to accomplish organizational goals. They evaluate risk levels, create risk control alternatives, and implement risk controls. Employees are always solving short term problems in their own area of expertise but how often are they challenged with strategic problem solutions? SIM is an opportunity for managers and SME’s to gain insight and expert abilities that contribute to the organization’s future. Moreover, the top leader and executives get the opportunity to coach and demonstrate these skills to the next cohort of leaders. Why more so with SIM - the practical importance of the decisions and problems offer teaching opportunities for senior managers to develop and identify future executive talent. More middle and junior level staff will also have the chance to raise problems and solutions that are not otherwise visible to the senior levels, particularly during the critical stage of operationalizing the strategy. Conflict Management Leaders facilitate open communication of controversial issues while maintaining relationships and teamwork. They effectively use collaboration as a style of managing contention; confront conflict positively and constructively to minimize impact to self, others, and the organization; and reduce conflict and build relationships and teams by specifying clear goals, roles, and processes. Unresolved conflicts are landmines in the deployment of strategy that may blow up at anytime during implementation if surfaced and managed early. Uncertainty is higher in strategy implementation than most other initiatives because more of the future view is based on probabilities. Dealing constructively with this ambiguity is a necessity. De-personalizing the debate and redirecting dispute toward clarifying the goals while respecting alternate assessments of facts - keeps the debate centered on what’s best for the organization. These disputes are great opportunities for leaders to demonstrate the “way we resolve debate here”. Creativity and Innovation




Leaders create a work environment that encourages creative thinking and innovation. They take reasonable risks and learn from the inevitable mistakes that accompany prudent risk-taking—and they apply this same thinking to those who work for them, encouraging innovation and helping their people apply the lessons learned. Leaders design and implement new or cutting-edge programs and processes. Leaders can demonstrate these strengths throughout SIM as the environment evolves, lessons are learned, mistakes discovered and new solutions surface -not just at the outset when this year’s strategy is launched but into subsequent years of SIM. Vision Development Leaders are able to envision a preferred future for their business units and functions, setting this picture in the context of the organization’s overall vision, missions, strategy, and driving forces. Concerned with long-term success, leaders establish and communicate organizational objectives and monitor progress toward objectives; initiate action; and provide structure and systems to achieve goals. Leaders create a shared vision of the organization, promote wide ownership, manage and champion organizational change, and engineer changes in processes and structure to improve organizational goal accomplishment A shared vision along with shared ownership of the mission sets the stage for envisioning, strategizing, planning, operationalizing and implementing the preferred future state of the organization. Leaders establish objectives, build structure, process and systems to initiate actions, monitor progress to goals, communicate and engineer change. 3. Leading the Organization Leading the Organization refers to you as the CEO, President, Executive Director, CXO, manager and those you are grooming for these positions. Directors, managers and team leaders who are fortunate to report to quality senior executives will find good models to follow on their path to future executive leadership. If not so fortunate, find a mentor or model who demonstrates these competencies and develop an informal or formal coaching relationship with them. Two competencies in this category that strategy SIM strengthens are: • Human Resource Management • Strategic Thinking Human Resource Management Making decisions that are merit based, ensure their people are appropriately selected, developed, trained, assigned, evaluated, recognized and rewarded. Leaders take corrective action when needed, support personnel development through assignments, formal training and coaching. Senior leadership of critical strategy implementation affords direct opportunities to assess future leader development, status, progress, coaching benefits and investments in the human resource.




Strategic Thinking Leaders react to crises immediately and routinely solve urgent problems. Leaders must also consider multiple time horizons and very complex interactions. This requires thinking strategically, which consists of adopting a systems view, focusing on intent—what are we really trying to accomplish?, thinking across time horizons, creating and testing hypotheses, and being intelligently opportunistic—taking advantage of current conditions. A formal strategy implementation management process makes strategic thinking (and its flaws) highly visible. A formal system should adopt a systems view that focuses on intent -what we are really trying to accomplish - testing hypotheses, assessing opportunities and threats that emerge during implementation, being “intelligently optimistic”. Informal methods of SIM do not facilitate sufficient rigor to regularly test initiatives, goals and tasks against strategic intent. 4. Leading Self Competencies in this category that strategy implementation management strengthens are: Accountability and Responsibility Aligning and Exhibiting Values Accountability and Responsibility: Leaders take ownership for their areas of responsibility, are accountable to effectively organize and prioritize tasks, and efficiently use resources. Rules, laws and guidelines that govern accountability and responsibility allow leaders to use appropriate formal tools to hold others accountable when situations warrant. When SIM clearly communicates the initiatives, goals and tasks for executing the strategy, tracks progress regularly, highlights on-track successes and failures then resolves them, encourages constructive commentary and demonstrates the meaning of accountability, responsibility with rewards, further development and other consequences - it defines the meaning of leadership in the organization. Aligning and Exhibiting Values: Leaders embody the highest standards of the organization’s Values, can communicate their meaning, hold peers and subordinates accountable to these organizational merits, and use them to guide performance, conduct, and decisions—every day Because, SIM often gives the leader face-to-face interaction with all levels of the organization with which she may not ordinarily engage, opportunities arise to personally demonstrate core values and personally hold others accountable for their alignment. Leaders align personal and the organization’s core values, embody the highest standards and communicate their meaning by demonstrating values in action and helping others to internalize those values.




In Closing: Strategy Implementation Management is a powerful opportunity to develop leadership competencies Successful strategy implementation is an organization’s top priority in its own right but there is a high second place priority that increases success and transforms your organization into a high performing power base: Leadership Development. A formal strategy implementation management process (SIM) makes strategic thinking (and its flaws) highly visible. A formal system should adopt a systems view that focuses on intent -what are we really trying to accomplish? Such a SIM becomes a real-life learning and coaching opportunity that uniquely gives top management the means to gain a transparent view from the top ranks of the company to the future leaders wherever they are on the organization chart. If the organization structure encumbers full visibility and access to identifying, mentoring, facilitating and modeling great leadership competencies, the importance of strategy implementation is sufficiently critical to your future success to open your access directly one-on-one as necessary. The senior executive owns the strategy more completely than any other manager and is one of the few responsibilities that cut through all departments and levels directly to the top. SIM is the opportunity to lead throughout the organization at every level. Comments, discussions and suggestions are welcome: 415-516-8433 Pacific Time [email protected]




ADDENDUM

Full List of Leadership Competencies Of course, a specific strategy can singularly benefit additional leadership competencies in its implementation. These competencies are based on those developed for various US Security groups. Example: www.uscg.mil/leadership/resources/competencies1.pdf I chose to use this source because the descriptions are not colored by short/medium term organization influences or agendas as some commercial examples are. Competencies that SIM particularly strengthens are asterisked. Leading Others Effective Communications* Influencing Others* Respect for Others and Diversity Management Team Building* Taking Care of People Mentoring* Leading Performance and Change Customer Focus* Management and Process Improvement* Decision Making and Problem Solving* Conflict Management* Creativity and Innovation* Vision Development and Implementation* Leading the Organization Stewardship Technology Management Financial Management Human Resource Management* Partnering External Awareness Entrepreneurship Political Savvy Strategic Thinking* Leading Self Accountability and Responsibility* Followership Self Awareness and Learning Aligning Values* Health and Well Being Personal Conduct Subject - Matter Expertise



http://www.uscg.mil/leadership/resources/competencies1.pdf�

Implementing Strategy Develops Leaders

Business

Transcript of Implementing Strategy Develops Leaders