Implementing Strategy Develops Leaders

Shepherd Consulting LLC
strategy implementation for strategic results

DEVELOP LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
BY IMPLEMENTING STRATEGY SUCCESSFULLY
Implementing strategy effectively and efficiently is critical to the success of any business.
That direct statement is well understood by all business leaders. What is not always equally
understood is that the same corporate processes and procedures employed to ensure a
business’ success – call it strategy implementation management -- can also be used to coach
and develop essential leadership competencies in staff throughout your organization.

Ultimate authority and accountability for strategy implementation resides with the leader of
the organization, business or functional unit. That leader has the right and obligation to reach
as wide and deep in the organization as necessary to direct, monitor, and, when necessary,
micro-manage. The means by which you know closer attention is required are the reins
attached to every important function, person, and process that is important to strategic
success.

No better opportunity exists for you to take the pulse of your organization at any critical
point that you deem necessary.

This paper presents strategy implementation management as an opportunity to develop the
leadership competencies of key staff who are responsible for advancing the organization’s
priorities and achieving its goals.

Four Categories of Leadership Competencies

Category One: Leading Others

Leading Others involves influencing the attitudes and behaviors of others to maximize their
performance and achieve common goals.

• Effective Communications • Influencing Others • Team Building • Mentoring

Category Two: Leading Performance and Change

Meeting the constant challenges of implementing change in the organization requires that
leaders apply performance competencies to their daily responsibilities. The six performance
competencies in this category enable each leader and the organization to perform at the top
of their abilities in any situation.
• Customer Focus • Management and Process Improvement • Conflict Management

• Decision-Making and problem •Solving Vision Development • Creativity and Innovation

Brian@accountcaffeine.com 415-516-8433
http://www.accountcaffeine.com San Francisco, CA

Category 3: Leading the Organization

Leaders of the organization include you as the CEO, President, Executive Director, CXO,
manager and those you are grooming for these positions. Directors, managers and team
leaders who are fortunate to report to quality senior executives find good models to follow on
their path to future executive leadership.

• Human Resource Management • Strategic Thinking

Category 4: Leading Self

Competencies in this category that strategy implementation management strengthens are:

• Accountability and Responsibility • Aligning and Exhibiting Values

Strategy Implementation Management is a powerful opportunity to
develop leadership competencies

Successful strategy implementation is a real-life learning and coaching opportunity that gives
management the opportunity to develop leaders AND execute strategy effectively. This
opening section is a top-level summary of the full report that follows.

Leading Others

Leading others involves working with and influencing others to achieve common goals and
increases the capacity of the individual and the team to outperform. Four competencies are
particularly developed by successful strategy implementation:
• Effective Communications -
• Influencing Others
• Team Building
• Mentoring

Effective Communication
Leaders express facts and ideas succinctly and logically, facilitate an open exchange of ideas,
ask for feedback routinely, and communicate face-to-face whenever possible. They write
clear, concise, and organized correspondence and reports. Successful leaders prepare and
deliver effective presentations. Competent coaches, supervisors, followers, performance
counselors, interviewers, and negotiators, leaders know how to approach many situations to
achieve organizational goals.

My research, reveals that uncertainty is the primary source of poor strategy implementation.


A reasonable inference is that if the leader (team, department, cross-functional task force)
cannot or does not articulate a clear goal and requirements neither will the group. A
recommended method of validating the team’s understanding is to simply ask them what their
role and goals are. Another - have them write down what you told them and give it back to
you. Send back more clarification and ask for their re-statement until they can tell you what
you hold them accountable for.
When the strategy morphs during implementation to take advantage of new opportunities and
methods - repeat this ‘call and response’ cycle with updated changes.

Influencing Others
Leaders communicate, direct, coach, and delegate, as the situation requires. Successful
leaders understand the importance and relevance of professional relationships, develop
networks, gain cooperation and commitment from others, build consensus, empower others
by sharing power and responsibility, and establish and maintain rapport with key players.

Coaching and requiring managers to recognize and experience the power of consensus-
building over directives, professional relationships over ‘getting along” or personal grudges.
Strategy implementation is an opportunity to break through silos to achieve cross-silo results.
Encouraging people to break out of their silo’d work relationships leverages results across the
organization - a practice that will increase their contribution in all activities.

Team Building
Leaders recognize and contribute to group processes; encourage and facilitate cooperation,
pride, trust, and group identity; and build commitment, team spirit, and strong
relationships. Leaders inspire, guide, and create an environment that motivates others
toward goal accomplishment; consider and respond to others’ needs, feelings, and
capabilities; and adjust their approach to suit various individuals and situations. Leaders
adapt leadership styles to a variety of situations and personify high standards of honesty,
integrity, trust, openness, and respect for others by applying these values and styles to daily
behavior.

Take the opportunity to groom and test future leaders with team leader roles in SIM. Team
members build successful team relationships and team strengthening processes. In the
implementation process, they develop team dynamics that are valuable and make for an
environment that easily leverages the talent - unfettered by the organization chart.

Mentoring
Drawing on their experience and knowledge, leaders deliberately assist others in developing
themselves, provide objective feedback about leadership and career development, and help
identify professional potential, strengths, and areas for improvement. Successful leaders
identify with the role of mentor to their staff. They have the skill to advise and develop
others in the competencies needed to accomplish current and future goals. Leaders seek out
mentors for themselves

As employees stretch to achieve their responsibilities for SIM, new mentoring opportunities


arise. They now have exposure to new potential mentors. Mentor/mentee relationships last
beyond and outside the strategy implementation period. Mentors should see that this role is
an expectation of leaders.

2. Leading Performance and Change

Leading Performance and Change to meet the constant challenges of implementing change in
the organization requires that leaders apply performance competencies to their daily
responsibilities. All six of performance competencies enable each leader and the organization
to perform at the top of their abilities in any situation.
• Customer Focus
• Management and Process Improvement
• Decision-Making and problem Solving
• Conflict Management
• Creativity and Innovation
• Vision Development and Implementation

Customer Focus
Leaders know who their internal and external customers are and make every possible effort
to discover their customers’ needs and to hear their customers’ voices. Leaders understand
the importance of measuring and monitoring the degree to which their customers’ needs are
met or exceeded and continually strive to improve that.

The customer can be a commercial buyer of product, expertise, service or the beneficiaries of
a non-profit. The customer can be another department that consumes the output of a
delivering department.
For SIM, the customer may be the board of Directors. This speaks to the need for numerical or
situation definitions that are clear indicator if not actual target results of the implemented
strategy. This focus should be used to align the organization behind implementation both
internally and externally with partners, suppliers and customers.

Management and Process Improvement
Successful leaders demonstrate the ability to plan, organize, and prioritize realistic tasks
and responsibilities for themselves and their people. They use goals, milestones, and control
mechanisms for projects. Leaders seek, anticipate, and meet customers’ needs—internal and
external to achieve quality results. In order to accomplish this, leaders monitor and evaluate
progress and outcomes produced by current processes, ensure continuous improvement
through periodic assessment, and are committed to improving products, services, and overall
customer satisfaction. They effectively manage time and resources to successfully
accomplish goals.

Strategy implementation itself is a process that must deliver quality results yet, often it is not
seen as a process but as a group of related projects. SIM is a recurring process within the year
and over multi-year efforts. It encompasses evolving strategy measures, goals and


opportunities. The second year should be more successful than the first and so on as SIM
becomes a core competency adding more value to the company each and every subsequent
year.

Decision-making and Problem Solving
Successful leaders are able to isolate high-importance issues, analyze pertinent information,
and involve others in decisions that affect them, generate promising solutions, and
consistently render judgments with lasting, positive impact.
Leaders identify and analyze problems; use facts, input from others, and sound reasoning to
reach conclusions; explore various alternative solutions; distinguish between relevant and
irrelevant information; perceive the impact and implications of decisions; and commit to
action, even in uncertain situations, to accomplish organizational goals. They evaluate risk
levels, create risk control alternatives, and implement risk controls.

Employees are always solving short term problems in their own area of expertise but how
often are they challenged with strategic problem solutions? SIM is an opportunity for
managers and SME’s to gain insight and expert abilities that contribute to the organization’s
future.
Moreover, the top leader and executives get the opportunity to coach and demonstrate these
skills to the next cohort of leaders. Why more so with SIM - the practical importance of the
decisions and problems offer teaching opportunities for senior managers to develop and
identify future executive talent.
More middle and junior level staff will also have the chance to raise problems and solutions
that are not otherwise visible to the senior levels, particularly during the critical stage of
operationalizing the strategy.

Conflict Management
Leaders facilitate open communication of controversial issues while maintaining
relationships and teamwork. They effectively use collaboration as a style of managing
contention; confront conflict positively and constructively to minimize impact to self,
others, and the organization; and reduce conflict and build relationships and teams by
specifying clear goals, roles, and processes.

Unresolved conflicts are landmines in the deployment of strategy that may blow up at
anytime during implementation if surfaced and managed early. Uncertainty is higher in
strategy implementation than most other initiatives because more of the future view is based
on probabilities. Dealing constructively with this ambiguity is a necessity.
De-personalizing the debate and redirecting dispute toward clarifying the goals while
respecting alternate assessments of facts - keeps the debate centered on what’s best for the
organization.
These disputes are great opportunities for leaders to demonstrate the “way we resolve
debate here”.

Creativity and Innovation


Leaders create a work environment that encourages creative thinking and innovation. They
take reasonable risks and learn from the inevitable mistakes that accompany prudent risk-
taking—and they apply this same thinking to those who work for them, encouraging
innovation and helping their people apply the lessons learned. Leaders design and implement
new or cutting-edge programs and processes.

Leaders can demonstrate these strengths throughout SIM as the environment evolves, lessons
are learned, mistakes discovered and new solutions surface -not just at the outset when this
year’s strategy is launched but into subsequent years of SIM.

Vision Development
Leaders are able to envision a preferred future for their business units and functions, setting
this picture in the context of the organization’s overall vision, missions, strategy, and
driving forces. Concerned with long-term success, leaders establish and communicate
organizational objectives and monitor progress toward objectives; initiate action; and
provide structure and systems to achieve goals. Leaders create a shared vision of the
organization, promote wide ownership, manage and champion organizational change, and
engineer changes in processes and structure to improve organizational goal accomplishment

A shared vision along with shared ownership of the mission sets the stage for envisioning,
strategizing, planning, operationalizing and implementing the preferred future state of the
organization. Leaders establish objectives, build structure, process and systems to initiate
actions, monitor progress to goals, communicate and engineer change.

3. Leading the Organization
Leading the Organization refers to you as the CEO, President, Executive Director, CXO,
manager and those you are grooming for these positions. Directors, managers and team
leaders who are fortunate to report to quality senior executives will find good models to
follow on their path to future executive leadership. If not so fortunate, find a mentor or
model who demonstrates these competencies and develop an informal or formal coaching
relationship with them.
Two competencies in this category that strategy SIM strengthens are:
• Human Resource Management
• Strategic Thinking

Human Resource Management
Making decisions that are merit based, ensure their people are appropriately selected,
developed, trained, assigned, evaluated, recognized and rewarded. Leaders take corrective
action when needed, support personnel development through assignments, formal training
and coaching.

Senior leadership of critical strategy implementation affords direct opportunities to assess
future leader development, status, progress, coaching benefits and investments in the human
resource.


Strategic Thinking
Leaders react to crises immediately and routinely solve urgent problems. Leaders must also
consider multiple time horizons and very complex interactions. This requires thinking
strategically, which consists of adopting a systems view, focusing on intent—what are we
really trying to accomplish?, thinking across time horizons, creating and testing hypotheses,
and being intelligently opportunistic—taking advantage of current conditions.

A formal strategy implementation management process makes strategic thinking (and its
flaws) highly visible. A formal system should adopt a systems view that focuses on intent -
what we are really trying to accomplish - testing hypotheses, assessing opportunities and
threats that emerge during implementation, being “intelligently optimistic”. Informal
methods of SIM do not facilitate sufficient rigor to regularly test initiatives, goals and tasks
against strategic intent.

4. Leading Self

Accountability and Responsibility
Aligning and Exhibiting Values

Accountability and Responsibility:
Leaders take ownership for their areas of responsibility, are accountable to effectively
organize and prioritize tasks, and efficiently use resources. Rules, laws and guidelines that
govern accountability and responsibility allow leaders to use appropriate formal tools to
hold others accountable when situations warrant.

When SIM clearly communicates the initiatives, goals and tasks for executing the strategy,
tracks progress regularly, highlights on-track successes and failures then resolves them,
encourages constructive commentary and demonstrates the meaning of accountability,
responsibility with rewards, further development and other consequences - it defines the
meaning of leadership in the organization.

Aligning and Exhibiting Values:
Leaders embody the highest standards of the organization’s Values, can communicate their
meaning, hold peers and subordinates accountable to these organizational merits, and use
them to guide performance, conduct, and decisions—every day

Because, SIM often gives the leader face-to-face interaction with all levels of the
organization with which she may not ordinarily engage, opportunities arise to personally
demonstrate core values and personally hold others accountable for their alignment.

Leaders align personal and the organization’s core values, embody the highest standards and
communicate their meaning by demonstrating values in action and helping others to
internalize those values.


In Closing: Strategy Implementation Management is a powerful opportunity to develop
leadership competencies

Successful strategy implementation is an organization’s top priority in its own right but there
is a high second place priority that increases success and transforms your organization into a
high performing power base: Leadership Development.

A formal strategy implementation management process (SIM) makes strategic thinking (and its
flaws) highly visible. A formal system should adopt a systems view that focuses on intent -
what are we really trying to accomplish?

Such a SIM becomes a real-life learning and coaching opportunity that uniquely gives top
management the means to gain a transparent view from the top ranks of the company to the
future leaders wherever they are on the organization chart. If the organization structure
encumbers full visibility and access to identifying, mentoring, facilitating and modeling great
leadership competencies, the importance of strategy implementation is sufficiently critical to
your future success to open your access directly one-on-one as necessary.

The senior executive owns the strategy more completely than any other manager and is one
of the few responsibilities that cut through all departments and levels directly to the top.
SIM is the opportunity to lead throughout the organization at every level.

Comments, discussions and suggestions are welcome:
415-516-8433 Pacific Time
brian@accountcaffeine.com


ADDENDUM

Full List of Leadership Competencies
Of course, a specific strategy can singularly benefit additional leadership competencies in its
implementation. These competencies are based on those developed for various US Security
groups. Example: www.uscg.mil/leadership/resources/competencies1.pdf
I chose to use this source because the descriptions are not colored by short/medium term
organization influences or agendas as some commercial examples are.
Competencies that SIM particularly strengthens are asterisked.
Leading Others
Effective Communications*
Influencing Others*
Respect for Others and Diversity Management
Team Building*
Taking Care of People
Mentoring*

Leading Performance and Change
Customer Focus*
Management and Process Improvement*
Decision Making and Problem Solving*
Conflict Management*
Creativity and Innovation*
Vision Development and Implementation*

Leading the Organization
Stewardship
Technology Management
Financial Management
Human Resource Management*
Partnering
External Awareness
Entrepreneurship
Political Savvy
Strategic Thinking*

Leading Self
Accountability and Responsibility*
Followership
Self Awareness and Learning
Aligning Values*
Health and Well Being
Personal Conduct
Subject - Matter Expertise


Implementing Strategy Develops Leaders

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