Strategic Leadership

(Jacob Rumans) #1

72 Strategic Leadership


into the work of an organization. The initiators of the process need to understand
the way strategy has operated within the decision-making history, politics, and
culture of the institution and to explain how they anticipate the work will be car-
ried out. For most of the faculty and staff, strategy will be identified with whatever
positive or unhappy experiences the campus has had with strategic planning in
the past. Discussing and distinguishing the characteristics of the strategy process
with campus decision-making bodies is a crucial part of the work of situating strat-
egy. Every campus has a governance system that is variously codified in bylaws,
documents, and agreements negotiated over the years. It is folly to ignore campus
protocols and expectations for governance in designing the details of a strategy
process.
A complex process never works by itself but draws on the energies of many
people in many different ways. The work of strategy pulls on ideas, proposals, and
conversations that occur all across the campus or in the unit using the process.
Yet there are designated administrative officers and faculty members who will
do the work of leading and coordinating the process and producing its products,
starting with the president or chief administrative officer of a unit. The concepts
and methods proposed in this book are addressed first to those who will define,
describe, initiate, and answer for the process, and next to those will participate
in it in various ways. In the initial stages of communicating about the work of
strategy, it is essential to have a sense of how people will be involved, as explained
in the next chapter.


Elements of Strategy


The literature and my own experience as a practitioner and consultant dem-
onstrate that the work of strategy tends to sort itself out along a spectrum of
approaches characterized by different purposes and conceptual models, as well as
by various degrees of systematization and comprehensiveness. As a way to prepare
for the tasks of strategy, we suggest analyzing it within a diagnostic framework. The
categories help those responsible for the process clarify their intentions as they set
and communicate goals for what they hope to achieve (cf. Chaffee 1991).


Tactical Thinking and Tacit Strategy


Although it has been in ascendancy for two decades, some institutions do not
rely significantly on strategy formally or otherwise, so they can be said to have
a tactical orientation. One typical pre-strategic practice involves decision mak-
ing that reacts to issues, problems, and crises more than it anticipates them. The
model of choice is more political and extemporized than purposeful. Substantial
tactical skill and insight may be in evidence, but it is difficult to discern the
design of a strategy. In contexts like these, individuals often complain that they
have little sense of where the institution is headed, as it responds to a continuing
series of problems and crises. Often an ad hoc orientation reflects the unavoidable

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