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CHAPTERCHAPTER

Strategies: Initiatives,

Imperatives, Goals, and Actions

T

hroughout this inquiry, I have tried to show how a method of strategic
leadership functions within the decision-making world of higher education.
The time has come to examine the logic of the approach in designing
specific strategies and courses of action. The aim of this chapter is to indicate
how strategic leadership operates as a discipline of decision making by making
strategies understandable, persuasive, and actionable.

Integrating Leadership and the Strategy Process

Even as our point of view shifts to focus on some of the details of strategic
planning, we shall not lose sight of the differentiating aspects of leadership in its
applied form. We will expect the various levels of strategy to bear the authen-
tic stamp of the organization’s narratives of identity and aspiration. In terms of
leadership, they must be able to orient choice and motivate action, even if the
proposed strategies stir up some measure of conflict and require difficult deci-
sions. Coping with conflict and change is always on the agenda of leadership.
To be effective in doing so, strategies have to be grounded in the institution’s
story, mission, and vision as sources of inspiration and legitimacy and must be
able to anticipate the challenges to their enactment. At whatever point one taps
into the strategy process, its different aspects should reflect that they are part of
an integrated effort. The vision can be read in the goals, which in turn give the
vision a purchase on reality. Since a vision reflects both limits and possibilities, it
portrays goals as indicators of deeper commitments and perspectives. In the work
of strategic leadership, the vision and goals are transparent to one another though
the sense-making and sense-giving power of the narrative that frames them.