The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching: 50 Top Executive Coaches Reveal Their Secrets

196 50 TOPEXECUTIVECOACHES

Vijay Govindarajan

Coaching for Strategic

Thinking Capability

I

work exclusively in the area of strategy with the CEO and top manage-

ment team. My coaching tends to be with that small group, rather than

one on one, and focuses more on business issues than behavioral ones. The

need for strategy coaching has become increasingly critical over the last 30

years. In my view, there are four primary reasons why the kind of work that

strategy coaches do has become so valuable to organizations.

First, the world has become very complex. In line with that, the half-life

ofknowledge has rapidly shortened. In a complex, fast-changing world, an

idea has only a finite life. Even if the CEO had the best idea in the industry

10 years ago, that idea is probably no longer of great worth to the organiza-

tion. The necessity for generating fresh ideas is so great that people who do

research and stay on the edge of what is innovative are increasingly valuable.

Second, organizations do not need answers to their particular problems;

instead, they need frameworks that will not only answer today’s questions

but perhaps tomorrow’s as well. Those frameworks must be simple but effec-

tive, grounded in research but powerful in practice. Strategy coaches de-

velop frameworks to apply tomorrow’s landscape to today’s opportunities.

Third, strategy coaches, because of their experience with more than

one organization, provide the opportunity for sharing best practices. It has

Vijay Govindarajan, known as VG, is the Earl C. Daum

1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck

School, and Founding Director of Tuck’s Center for

Global Leadership. VG’s area of expertise is strategy,

with particular emphasis on strategic innovation, indus-

try transformation, and global strategy and organization.

He was ranked by Management International Reviewas

one of the “Top 20 North American Superstars” for re-

search in strategy and organization and was named by BusinessWeekas one of

its “Top Ten Business School Professors in Corporate Executive Education.”

One of his papers was recognized as “one of the 10 most-often cited articles”

in the entire 40-year history of the prestigious Academy of Management Jour-

nal. He has written more than 60 articles and was the coauthor, most recently,

of the book The Quest for Global Dominance.He can be reached by phone at

(603) 646-2156, by e-mail at [email protected], or via the Internet at

http://www.vg-tuck.edu.