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Intentional Leadership — D4, W1, M10 — Strategy

There are two key components to a strategy — the vision and the plan to achieve it. It truly is that simple.

As a leader, its your responsibility to not only dream the vision and be able to articulate it to your team / organization, but also to create the plan and inspire your team / organization to achieve it.

This is another area in which it is important that your level of self-awareness is high. In all honesty, are you better at the dreaming part or the achieving it part?

Explain your answer to that question.

Now that you are focused on your personal strength, and have been giving thought to the importance of strategy in achieving goals, what are the keys to an effective strategy?

What are your weaknesses around strategy?

How do you compensate for them?

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.   ~Sun Tzu

Having spent a considerable amount of time and energy reflecting on this, and having undergone a broad variety of personal assessments and 360 reviews, I can easily say I’m good at creating a vision and laying out the strategic plan. From a tactical standpoint, I am perfectly capable of defining specific tactics and carrying them out, but this part of the process is not my primary strength, consequently it is a much more taxing part of the process for me. I, as well as my team or organization, am better served if I have within my resources someone whose strength lies in the tactical work.

What about you?

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Intentional Leadership — D3, W1, M10 — Strategy

Today, examine the core strategies your organization or team  is following. Are they easily explained and when written, do they fit on one page? If not, it’s time for some review and simplification. Challenge your team to do the same — simplify the core strategies each member of your team will follow in their specific roles that will allow them to support the organizational strategies — and fit them on one page.

Again, if they are too complicated and difficult to explain, understand, or follow, no one will use them.

Then, bring your team together and evaluate each person’s revised strategy. This exercise will allow you to determine whether individual members really understand the overall organizational strategies, and if they are on track to support the bigger picture goals.

This is a great opportunity to address any adjustments that need to be made and to refine individual and team-level strategies to ensure your team is on track to meet organizational goals.

Take some time, right now, to get started.

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Intentional Leadership — D2, W1, M10 — Strategy

The best strategies are simple; make them too complex and they will fail because no one will follow them.

To begin, you need to define a clear destination; what are you trying to accomplish and where will you be when you arrive? The strategic plan will help you identify the significant milestones you will achieve along the way to your final destination. Knowing your final destination has been defined, and key milestones identified along the way allows you to focus on shorter-term goals and keeps you from over-planning.

This is the point from which to start. As you reach the first milestone, you can take stock and assess your progress and review your end destination. This is when you can make necessary adjustments based on progress to-date and any changes in the dynamics related to our goals.

As you develop your strategies, keep in mind your organization’s and team’s strengths, identify the resources you will need that you don’t already possess, and prepare accordingly. You might look at it this way, using a “quadrant” view…draw a box on a flip chart or white board, with four break-out areas.

Top left: What are your organization’s vision, goals, and values?

Top right: What are your organization’s strengths?

Bottom left: What problem or opportunity is your organization currently facing?

Bottom right: What assets (time, capital, and talent) are you willing to commit to your pursuit of the goal?

For this particular opportunity, develop a clear objective, answer the questions, and map out three to five mile markers that you will hit along the journey.

Now, schedule the first step towards reaching the first milestone.

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