Creating a strategy that truly delivers is one of the ultimate skills for leaders. A well-crafted strategy is a comprehensive, coordinated response that effectively moves the needle on what you’re trying to achieve. For a strategy to be successful, all the necessary components must be in place—like a well-baked cake with all the right ingredients.
Often, strategies fail because they lack the essential components. They are not what I call comprehensive strategies if they contain just a few random good ideas. I've seen many examples of a critical “make-or-break” factor that initially gets overlooked by people looking to create a strategy with impact. It's usually there in the back of their mind, but without articulating it, it’s hard to realise its importance.
Here are three common “make-or-break” factors I’ve seen in practice:
Stakeholder engagement: This is one that is often underestimated and not seen as part of the strategy, just as an 'add-on' best practice. As a result, it is often done to the minimum extent and without much thought. When considering the flow on effects on stakeholders of the initiatives we are implementing, it doesn't take long to work out that these effects can in turn come back to impact on the success of the initiative, for better or worse.
Limits on decision-making power: Sometimes, strategic actions are constrained by the fact that you’re not the only or primary decision-maker. I’ve seen this challenge with minor shareholders who want to impact the organisation but are limited by their role. Or decisions that span departments and require wider buy-in than the department/team technically mandated to make the decision.
Acknowledging resource constraints: Ambitious strategies are great, but they need to be realistic. Acknowledging the available resources, including people’s capacity and well-being, is crucial. Often, the missing piece is either right-sizing the work or ensuring key people are supported.
It’s like finding the magic key—do you have one in that big initiative you’re trying to achieve?
In a coaching session, one of my clients was working on a strategy to help her team work in ways that would enable equitable outcomes for clients. She had many thoughtful elements in place, but she recognised a niggle that something was missing. It turned out that her “baking soda”—the key ingredient she needed—was the ability to demonstrate the impact of the initiatives as they were implemented. She reconised that storytelling along the way was critical for inspiring the long-term change she envisioned. For strategies that aim to achieve cultural change and shift big things, the work requires time and consistency. Her “ah-ha” moment was realizing that without a way to demonstrate impact, her strategy couldn’t be sustained over time.
Love those “ah-ha” moments!
These “ah-ha” moments are incredibly rewarding to witness. What I see time and again is that the insights are there within my clients all along; they just need some structure to help them connect the dots. I always emphasise that the framework I provide isn’t a machine into which we feed information and it spits out answers. Instead, it creates the structure and support for clients to recognise their own insights and navigate their unique challenges.
But where do they come from, these insights you speak of?
The best way to answer this question is with a quote from one of my favourite authors:
“Search all those strategic planning diagrams, all those interconnected boxes that supposedly give you strategies, and nowhere will you find a single one that explains the creative act of synthesizing experiences into a novel strategy. Take the example of the Polaroid camera. One day in 1943, Edwin Land’s three-year-old daughter asked why she could not immediately see the picture he had just taken of her. Within an hour, this scientist conceived the camera that would transform his company. In other words, Land’s vision was the synthesis of the insight evoked by his daughter’s question and his vast technical knowledge.”
— Henry Mintzberg, The fall and rise of strategic planning, HBR 1994
The insights that produce a comprehensive strategy that delivers, don't come from the frameworks themselves. The frameworks help, but they are just scaffolding.
The insights we need come from the creative act within our own brains. They require us to really think.
They require us to trust ourselves, and to know when to stop thinking and decide, to know when to zoom out and when to zoom in, and so much more. These are the skills of a strategic thinker. These are the skills that produce strategy that delivers.
If you liked this, sign up for my articles straight to your inbox, check out my website, follow me on LinkedIn, or contact me on nina@ninafield.co.nz to discuss how I can help you with strategic thinking and strategic leadership development.
Comentarios