The Art of Strategic Leadership

The Art of Strategic Leadership is written by Steven J. Stowell, Phd, and Stephanie S. Mead, MBA, who are both senior leaders within the Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness (CMOE).

The book is a narrative based journey of a senior manager, "Alex" who has become responsible for a production plant located at Dallas, Texas. This plant has been under-performing, mainly due to the previous plant owners, and has now been acquired by the company that Alex works for. His mandate is to turn the plant around in all areas of performance to ensure that the plant survives and ensure the future of all the plants employees and their families.

The following content is based on areas of the book that I found interesting and that I wanted to be able to refer back to in the future.

The Art of Risk

I noted in the section 'Stepping Up' that the author suggests that unless you are able to step out of your comfort zone and take the risk needed to start something bold and new then you will go nowhere.

This resonates with me: I have seen the lack of progress within companies that I have worked for due to the inability of managers to seek out and implement change.

There are reasons for this of course:

• At an individual and manager level, implementing change is impossible because everyone is overwhelmed operationally and continually fighting fires. These people ask 'how do I have the time to even think strategically let alone implement process improvements, strategic initiatives and/or experiment and prototype?'
• Management at a director level and above do not have the skills, training or experience to drive change. In my opinion, this is a large problem.

It is my belief that implementing change can be achieved over time by focusing as little as 30 minutes a day on change implementation. Over a year this accumulates to more than 100 hours of work towards reaching a goal, personal or otherwise. Imagine looking back and reflecting on how that 100 hour investment took you in terms of adopting change, managing process improvement, mentoring and coaching staff? Compound this number by everyone on your team, or in your organization and I am sure you will be surprised by the scale of change you can achieve.

In terms of management and the reasons why change is not driven down into an organization I will go as far as to say that this is manifested by how employees are promoted and retained. I have seen organizations full of managers who have been given that status simply to retain them. Very few have experienced training or undertaken management development and even fewer understand how to use their teams and people to initiate change and to understand how a team level strategy can align with organizational strategy.

Instead of uplifting these employee's pay (or the many other ways to provide rewards), these people are promoted into higher levels simply because the pay scales associated with those levels are sufficient enough to retain them. Worse, they are promoted to management position and are expected to carry with that, their current activities and responsibilities, as well as the additional overhead that comes with managing teams or projects.

Why do organizations do this to people? I understand it that some organizations have no choice as they are small and profits are marginal, but I have personally seen and experienced this in New York Stock Exchange listed companies and in Government bureaucracies.

So, this is where I can make the connection to the stepping up section of the book. This section discusses that if you have strategic ideas and plans, then they will go nowhere unless you are prepared to get out of your comfort zone and take the risk to get something started. If you are a manager like the one I described above, then the way to break out of lack of development, mentorship, coaching or even experience, is to do something and learn from it. The level of risk at your position within the company is probably pretty low and that means that your vulnerability is probably low. So just get started. The first step is always the hardest.

The authors at this point suggest 4 ways of managing your mindset, and managing your own personal risk:

1. There are always potential risks and uncertainties associated with a new situation, opportunity or issue. The suggestion is to define each of these analytically which will distance you emotionally. I think that there are lots of ways to do this ranging from simple reflection (write it down), to a SWOT analysis, or even using a SCRUM technique whereby you can allocate a value, such as a Fibonacci number, as an indication of a level of risk or uncertainty. The Fibonacci technique is a really good way of understanding the difference between the risks associated with one issue and another.

As an example, if you give a Fibonacci value of 3 to an item then that would probably equate to a very small risk. Applying a value of 7 may imply that you have a more moderate risk, and a 12 or 18 would be a significant risk with 18 probably being double that of 12, which is double that of 7, and so on for 3.

2. Cost versus benefits. The authors comment that performing a cost benefit exercise is simple to undertake but not everyone does this. There is no downside to asking 'What are the cost and benefits of accepting the risk?' Even if you accept the risk and things do not turn out as you expect, you will have learned something which will add to your future management and assessment capabilities.

3. Use science. The authors suggest to explore mentally. Carefully scrutinize by exploring the information you have and design experiments to measure your hypothetical ideas. Think about the effect of time, cost and resources. There is a subtle difference here with point 2 above in terms that costs and benefits analyze the likely results or outcomes where in this point, we look at how things unfold for different scenarios. Basic risk management is used here: Accept the risk, avoid the risk, transfer or prevent the risk. In many cases, accepting risk incrementally, rather than an all or nothing approach is probably the best way to go.

4. Have courage. the authors quote Dr. Leonard Zunin who said 'Courage is seeing your fear in a realistic perspective, defining it, considering alternatives, and choosing to function in spite of risks'. Adjusting your mindset to simple risks will give you the conviction to face more significant risks later on. This is the 'Why not' frame of mind:

- Why not try something new?
- Why not use a different approach?
- Why not reach out to the customer?
- Why not look at this in a different way?
- Why not think ahead and get prepared?

Risk should be an opportunity to a new and better future - and not a path to failure - and this is the shift in the mindset that the authors believe is more productive. Being dedicated to your vision, values, and goals, while being honest about reality, provides you with the guard rails needed tto stay on track a you try new things.

At this stage in the book, the main character Alex, is using these techniques as a way of thinking about his staff and assessing their potential, their approach to risk, and he is trying to understand if they are all up to the task ahead.