Encyclopedia of Leadership

HOW TO USE THIS LEADERSHIP TOOL

“As Kierkegaard once observed, life is lived forward but understood backward. Managers may have to

live strategy in the future, but they must understand it through the past.”

—Henry Mintzberg, MINTZBERG ON MANAGEMENT

Strategies are abstractions until they are delivered at the mundane, day-to-day level of operat-

ing a business (i.e., waiting on customers). At this point, your strategy may seem obvious to

insiders, but what outsiders, including competitors, will miss is the deep level of understand-

ing and commitment behind the strategy. Leaders achieve this level of understanding and

commitment by involving as many people as possible in building and adapting a strategy, and

by talking with their people on a regular basis about the implications behind the strategy. Use

the workspace here to plan or review your organization’s strategy, and to plan how you will

continually communicate the strategy within your organization.

WEB WORSKHEET

70 SECTION 3 TOOLS FORSTRATEGICTHINKING

Identified three value disciplines, only one of which can be the basis of an organization’s strategy:

1.Operational excellence—quality, price, and ease of purchase that no competitor can match.

2.Product leadership—providing the best possible product(s) to as many customers as possible.

3.Customer intimacy—understanding your customers and delivering exactly what they want.

Challenged competition as the basis of strategic thinking. “Competitive advantage in the new

world stems from knowing when and how to build ecosystems ... .” Like a biological ecosystem,

strategies evolve over four stages:

1. pioneering or creating a new product or service niche;


2. expansion of the ecosystem by working with partners to attain niche dominance;


3. maintaining authority in the ecosystem, often by cost-cutting and restructuring;


4. finally, as in biological ecosystems, death and renewal due to the changing environment.
   Framed strategy as games theory with changing rules of competition, including changes to how
   value is added, what tactics are used, how scope is defined, and so on.

Michael Tracey

and Fred

Wiersma

James Moore

Adam

Brandenburger

❑ Keep it simple. Strategy needs to be a

template for decision making. People

need to carry it in their heads and have a

deep sense of what is and isn’t strategic

for the organization.

❑ Design and adapt your strategy-making

process to your specific situation.

[☛1.8 Recursive Leadership]

❑ Be better at providing a product or service

than your competitors (e.g., at GE, Jack

Welch insists on being in the top two, or

dropping a product line).

❑ At what product(s) or service(s) will you

excel?

Be strategic about

your strategy.

Have a competitive

edge (i.e., be very

good at something).

Element of

strategic thinking Things to think about Your action plan