Becoming a strategic leader 2

Compliments of the season everyone. I pray that the year 2025 will deliver its bounty to all of you who have kept faith with us here. By January 2025, this column will be 17 years old. If any one of you dear readers, has something to say, perhaps in the form of feedback or original thought that you would like to express, the opportunity will be made available in the month of January as my way of celebrating you and your matchless interest that has made this column worth the effort.

Let me apologize for the unintended delay in bringing you the concluding part of the series I began three editions ago. Having said that, there is no better time to talk about being strategic than the end of a year and the start of another.

Several myths surround the subject of strategic leadership. Prominent among them is the concept of strategic leadership being the exclusive preserve of the CEO and those who lead the organization or those who occupy critical leadership positions in any group dynamics. In my functions as a pastor and corporate consultant, I have seen this scenario play out several times. Most church members believe that it is the pastor’s sole responsibility to grow the church, organise the programs that will attract new members, spearhead and implement follow-up initiatives, make personal visits to all members who are sick or in one form of distress or the other. Nothing can be farther from the truth. In reality, anyone who is involved in managing information, from the top to the bottom of an organization, in any form relevant to the functions and processes of achieving the corporate objective should be involved in strategic leadership. The chain is as strong as its weakest link. The nemesis of any warrior, even if a giant, is the chink in his armor. The least paid employee who derails from corporate objectives can rubbish the CEO’s best intentions. You become a strategic leader when you embrace responsibility without being prompted.

Unfortunately, many positional leaders, because of their personal insecurity and narcissistic personality, create around them a Messiah Complex which implies that they alone as the leader have the ultimate responsibility to be strategic. The truth is that great leaders are so comfortable in their skin that they have no problem in developing other people and encouraging them to be proactively productive and to continue to bring value to the organization. Being on the cutting edge and securing competitive advantage is definitely not the job of one person, no matter his position in the team.

There are many who subscribe to the notion that strategic leadership is about always making the perfect choices in a timely manner. People who think this way tend to undermine the value of genuine efforts even when certain results are not guaranteed. Perfectionists tend to breed mediocrity. This is because they are largely focused on what is not working, in the delusion that being wrong or making mistakes is unacceptable. Most people who work with perfectionists hardly bring ideas to the table, especially when they have no guarantees to assure its success. They simply do what they are told and in the way they are told to do it. The consequence of this is arrested development in the organization because mistakes are essential ingredients of the quest for sustainable success. Those who are afraid of making mistakes can hardly make anything else. Strategic leadership, therefore, is a process of discovery not exactitude. It is a process of discovering among a set of options and via a process of trial and error, the few key things that the organization needs to do well. This requires discipline and commitment to continuous learning throughout the organization. Strategic leaders build a learning community that facilitates the conception, gestation and birthing of ideas on a consistent basis in the organization. The real job of a strategic leader is not to single-handedly come up with strategy while everyone else simply play cheerleader and lines up behind him for implementation. Any leader who operates with a silo mentality when it comes to strategy is not worth being described as a strategic leader. Everyone in the collective must be encouraged to recognize the abundant opportunities for strategic leadership in order to play a critical role in supporting the organization’s success.

I write this on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Lagos to New York with a stopover in Lome. The Lagos-Lome segment was flown by Asky Airlines. While waiting for the New York flight at the Gnassingbe Eyadema airport in Lome, I saw two planes with their engine comparments open while some men were doing some work in them. For a moment, a few scary thoughts went through my mind. What if one of those men was a greenhorn engineer whose competence level was still low? What if one of them, in a moment of carelessness, left a bolt loose or crossed a wire? I thought of several scenarios of possible human errors that could endanger the lives of passengers while an airplane is airborne. I thought of the ground staff who fuel the plane. I thought of the cabin crew as well as the air traffic controllers and many other unseen and unheard people without whose contribution the pilot’s competence would amount to nothing. Then, it suddenly dawned on me that a safe flight is not just the achievement of a competent, professional pilot. Keeping a contraption as huge as the Boeing 787 or Airbus A380 airborne for more than 10 hours non-stop goes beyond the capacity of a pilot and a GPS. It is a feat made possible by the combined efforts of everyone in the value chain.

If you have ever watched a Formula 1 car race, you will understand the power of synergy as strategy. The driver is usually the celebrated and decorated one but he is not the only star of the win. His success is tied to the crew members who performed strategic roles on the course and at those times when the driver has to make a pit stop. For instance, the precision and timing of the change of tyres, accomplished in a matter of seconds, the discipline, concentration and high degree of commitment and passion on the part of everyone on the driver’s team are significant in a race where a delay of one second can mean the difference between a win and a loss.

No actor could ever become a celebrity without the scriptwriter, the producer, the costumier, the makeup artist, the production manager, the camera crew, and editors.

Leaders must learn to celebrate everyone and acknowledge their contribution towards the overall success of the organization. Even at the risk of making mistakes, people must be made to feel like stakeholders in the collective while being encouraged to bring ideas that can enhance the quality of strategy and service delivery to the table. The CEO may be the face of the organization to the public and get acclaim when it succeeds, but in reality, every member of the team represents a dimension of the organization’s corporate identity or outcomes.

True success is not just “My story” but “Our story”.

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!

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