According to the Business Dictionary, strategic leadership is “the process of using well considered tactics to communicate a vision for an organization or one of its parts.”

The aim of strategic leadership always includes an aspect of transformation. It’s about creating a vision that helps to move an organization from where it is to where God wants it to be.

A strategic leader is one who carefully evaluates available options and positions the organization for growth by taking action. This leadership style is dynamic by nature and requires a high level of commitment and work involvement.

Strategic planning is the key to warfare; to win, you need a lot of good counsel (Proverbs 24:6, The Message).

Leaders give direction. However, before they can do this, they need to determine which direction is the best way forward. Leadership effectiveness is enhanced by a clear mindset on the leader’s strategic focus.

Vision, mission, purpose, goals, and objectives all can assist in creating a strategic focus provided they are current, relevant, and well thought out. Organizations that are well led are characterized by a tremendous amount of intentional decision-making and action. The leader who lacks strategic focus will soon be in charge of an organization that is drifting, subject to the various external forces surrounding it, and unable to propel itself towards a God given destiny. Focus is seen in the dimensions of planning, decision-making, urgency, and use of time.

Individuals and teams enact strategic leadership when they think, act, and influence in ways that promote the enduring success of the organization. The work of strategic leadership is to drive and move an organization so that it will thrive in the long term whether the organization is for profit or non-profit. It depends only on whether your organization seeks and achieves an enduring set of capabilities that provide distinctive value to stakeholders over the long term, in whatever sector your organization operates or whatever bottom line you are measured by.

Where there is no vision, the people perish… (Proverbs 29:18, KJV).

Biblical examples of planning

The following Scripture passages are biblical examples of planning.

1) God did it.
“Have you not heard? Long ago I did it, from ancient times I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass.” (Isaiah 37:26, NASB)

2) Noah did it.
Noah received explicit instructions from God to build the ark. God gave detailed measurements to Noah, and he was faithful to carry out the long-range plan. He finished construction of the ark, exactly as God told him—in 120 years. The ark was build so well that it withstood 40 days of torrential rain, and then it floated a solid year as the floods subsided (Genesis 7-9).

3) Nehemiah did it.
The long-range plan of Nehemiah was to see the wall of Jerusalem rebuilt. He visualized the completion of the wall and then began plans for its construction. The work was completed in 52 days because each family was assigned a certain portion of the wall to build. He planned and organized the project with excellence (Nehemiah 1-5).

4) David did it.
The long-range plan of David was to build a temple. God did not allow David to build it because of his association with wars. However, when Solomon was chosen to succeed him, David handed Solomon the completed plan for the temple and a list of materials on hand. After seven years of construction, Solomon completed the temple, and the long-range plan of David was fulfilled (2 Samuel 7; 1 Kings 5:2-3).

5) Jesus told parables about it.
We often fail to notice that Jesus spoke about the necessity of planning and strategy frequently. In his parables, Jesus explained it is foolish to neglect planning:

a) The Wise and Foolish Builder: Matthew 7:24-27
b) The Builder Counting the Cost: Luke 14:28-30
c) The King Planning for Battle: Luke 14:31-32
d) The Unjust Steward: Luke 16:1-8

PAUSE

1) What can we learn from these examples to apply to strategic planning today?

2) What difference would it make in the life and ministry of your organization and community if your leadership team followed these biblical examples to create and follow a strategic plan for God’s mission for your ministry?

What makes strategic leadership different?

Strategic leadership is exerted when the decisions and actions of leadership have strategic implications for the organization.

1) Strategic leadership is broad in scope.
Strategic leadership impacts areas outside the leader’s own functional area and business unit, as well as outside the organization. This broad scope requires seeing the organization as an interdependent and interconnected system of multiple parts, where decisions in one area provoke actions in other areas.

2) The impact of strategic leadership is felt over long periods of time.
The strategic leader must keep long-term goals in mind while working to achieve short term objectives.

3) Strategic leadership often involves significant organizational change.
Strategic leadership results in significant change.

Creating sustainable competitive advantage for an organization is no easy task. It requires bright and capable people, but that is not enough.

What keeps organizations and their leaders from being successfully strategic?

Frequently, the obstacles fall into three categories:

1) Lack of focus
Organizations and leaders try to be all things to all people, and they fail to make the tough decisions that provide a strategic focus. An ill-defined or undefined strategy indicates that an organization has not made difficult but necessary choices. This is particularly true in organizations that adopt strategies to copy their competitors. Avoiding difficult choices and refusing to discriminate can lead to a kitchen sink strategy one that includes a little bit of everything, the opposite of focus. A lack of focus affects people in organizations by making them feel overly pressured from time and over committed. They do not have a sense of what can come off their plates. Lack of time is one challenge to being more strategic. Additionally, a lack of common understanding about the strategy allows personal agenda to look good against criteria that they have developed without having reached consensus across the organization that those criteria are indeed the right ones for measuring success.

2) Loose tactics
The things that people, departments, and functional areas actually do are not aligned with the organization’s strategy. Even with a common understanding of the strategy, actually making choices that are consistent with that understanding is hard to do. A strategic plan itself is only a plan; an organization’s actual strategy lies in the decision and choices its members make as they enact, or fail to enact, the plan. Tactics may also be misaligned
because people throughout the organization don’t really understand what the strategy means for them on a day-to-day basis. In some cases, this is because the strategy does not create focus. But in other cases, formal and coordinated communication systems are ineffective or nonexistence, so people get mixed messages about the strategy.

3) Limited range
Leaders focus on short-term success at the expense of long-term viability. The line between short-term operational pressures and long-term success is a difficult one to walk. Short-term success is important, however, when an organization consistently favors the short-term over the long-term by, for example, neglecting to make investments to keep resources and technology up-to-date, the organization will suffer in the end.

PAUSE

1. Do you know of one leader you consider to be strategic? What makes you say so.
2. Would you consider yourself as a strategic leader? Why? Why not?

How to become a strategic leader

Becoming a strategic leader involves choosing experiences rich in opportunities for learning (picking the right wave) and learning all you can from them (riding it as far as you can). Developing your own strategic leadership is a learning process. In Becoming a Strategic Leader, Richard Hughes and Katherine Beatty identify what becoming strategic leader entails:

1) Assessing where you are
“A personal SWOT” involves taking stock of strengths and weaknesses as a leader and the opportunities and threats facing your future effectiveness. (Think of your future effectiveness in your present role as well as roles in different contexts that involve new challenges).

a) Identify and collect relevant data.
To do a personal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, begin by identifying all the sources of data you have available concerning your present and future effectiveness as a strategic leader. Data you might collect includes performance appraisals, developmental feedback at work, instrument-based assessments of leadership styles and preferences, current leadership challenges, and opportunities in your work environment and how they might change over time (thus changing the relative importance of different competencies to your future effectiveness as a strategic leader).

b) Sort data into SWOT categories.
After collecting this data, sort it into the various SWOT categories:

Insert diagram on page 86

REFLECTION

Complete a SWOT assessment on your leadership to determine where you are at.

1. What are your strengths as a leader?
2. What are your weaknesses?
3. What opportunities exist in your leadership role?
4. What threats exist in your leadership role?

2) Understanding who you are and where you want to go.

• What are your personal aspirations as a leader?
• What kind of leader do you want to be?

It may be useful to translate these broad questions into four related areas:

a) Values

• What values are most central and critical to how you approach work?
• What values do you want to be known for practicing (not just preaching)?

b) Leadership legacy

• What do you want to be your leadership legacy to others?
• What do you want others to say about your leadership after you’ve left your current position or the organization?
• What lasting impact do you want to have not just on the organization, but also on the people around you?

c) Career aspirations

• What kind of role would you like to have five or ten years from now?
• Describe the critical elements of what for you would be an ideal opportunity for the strategic leadership.

d) Aspirations for your strategic leadership team

• What is your vision for the kind of strategic impact you’d like your team to have?

3) Learning how to get there
Leadership development is a process, one that depends on your ability and willingness to learn from your experience. It is clear from research that some experiences are developmentally richer and more powerful than others. That’s probably consistent with your own experience. When managers and executives are asked what two or three events throughout their careers contributed the most to making them the kind of leaders they are today, their responses tend to fall into very few categories such as challenging assignments and learning from others. What’s also required is a willingness to go against the grain of one’s habitual activities before being confronted with a new challenge.

It is helpful to understand the key drivers of your own strategic leadership effectiveness.

Developmental drivers are closely related to individual or team development objectives, but there are usually more objectives than drivers since multiple objectives can be derived from one driver.

PAUSE

Using information from your personal SWOT analysis and aspirations, try to identify the three or four things most critical to your success as a strategic leader.

4) Making the journey
Making the journey is about the tactics needed to implement a strategy effectively. In this case, it’s about the specific actions needed to achieve your aspirations.

a) Create a development plan.
Development plans should include your long-term aspirations; your immediate developmental objectives, particularly in your choice of developmental experiences; the resources and support you’ll need on that developmental journey; a timeline for achieving your objectives; and appropriate metrics or success measures by which you’ll know that you have accomplished what you intended.

b) Select experiences to leverage your developmental drivers.
The most critical elements of your development plan are the experiences from which you intend to learn. These experiences are the cauldron of learning, and they vary in many ways: in terms of how much of a challenge they pose, given your present levels of skill and experience, in the domain of learning engaged (cognitive or interpersonal, for example), and in the consequences associated with succeeding or failing in the activity.

Kinds of experiences to consider as part of your own plan to develop your strategic leadership include:

i) Opportunities to better understand the competitive environment—following market trends, market research, etc.
ii) Projects to review aspects of corporate aspirations (values, culture, climate).
iii) Development, implementations, and interpretation of your company’s strategic metrics (for example, developing a new balanced scorecard).
iv) Strategic planning—translating strategy and goals into operational plans and tactics, scenario planning.
v) Work assignments that span accustomed corporate boundaries (cross-functional, cross-regional etc.).
vi) Observing and assisting key strategic leadership teams.
vii) Enterprise-wide communication initiatives to promote shared understanding and alignment around the strategy.
viii) Working on an action—learning team tasked to come up with a new solution to a vexing problem.
ix) Writing an article for a corporate publication on some aspect of corporate strategy, direction, or other attribute.
x) Serving on a task force to identify critical organizational capabilities for success in the next decade.
xi) Opportunities to assist or observe very senior strategic leadership teams.

c) Create support for yourself.
It can feel risky to go against the grain especially when the stakes of success and failure are high. That’s why some of the most important resources to include in your development plan are ways to support yourself during your learning. Such support can include technical resources (written materials on leading virtual teams, for example) as well as socio-emotional support (perhaps a coach or confidant with whom you can seek guidance, vent, or engage in developmental conversations).

d) Be vigilant for emergent development opportunities.
Creating a development plan is a good idea, but don’t let the existence of the plan distract your attention from ways that unforeseen opportunities might represent even better ways to leverage your own developmental drivers.

5) Checking your progress
Your development plan will identify critical milestones of your progress. Don’t let your development plan or objectives become ends in themselves. Regularly reassess whether the drivers you’ve identified continue to be the most critical ones for your own long-term development.

Your development cycle continues in an interative fashion as your progressive development creates opportunities for leadership, requiring different skills and further development.

BIBLE VERSES ON BEING A STRATEGIC LEADER

The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps (Proverbs 14:15).

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed (Proverbs 15:22).

Make plans by seeking advice; if you wage war, obtain guidance (Proverbs 20:18).

David used strategy in battle. David needed men who could think and plan strategically, and God gave him the men of Issachar (1 Chronicles 12:32).

Joshua sent spies to the land of Canaan to investigate before the children of Israel could move in ( Joshua 2).

Nehemiah devised a strategy to enable them continue with the wall building project in the midst of attack threats from their enemies (Nehemiah 4:16-18)

REFLECTION AND APPLICATION

What lessons would we learn from the life of Jesus, our role model, to enable us become more strategic in our leadership?

EVALUATION AND ACTION

1. What hinders you from being a strategic leader?
2. What practical steps will you take to overcome the hurdles identified above?