Improving Business Strategy and Leadership Harmony

Are you confident in your business strategy? Maybe. Do you have confidence in the leaders entrusted with this strategy? TSI investigates why harmony between business strategy and leadership is a must, and how developing a leadership strategy can achieve this.

Poor coordination between objectives and implementation costs organizations a lot. Does poor planning hurt your results and lead to missed numbers with a poor customer experience, lost sales and low employee morale?

As a leader, you don’t want your business unit to look like this.

Of the many explanations for the failure of implementation and execution, one clear reason is leadership itself. The role of a leader is critical in implementing a strategy. Without good leadership, no good strategy can be created.

In most organizations, business strategy is formed at the top, and then CEOs, COOs, and other operating directors shape and implement business strategy for their constituent business units. Many business strategists and leaders are unprepared for the responsibility for the strategic tasks that come with it. And in addition, every leader interprets the strategy in her own way.

Preparing leaders for people and process leadership can reduce failures in business strategy and grow revenue.

Whether you are a business leader, an entrepreneur or an organization (startup or enterprise), you can benefit from creating a leadership strategy that will determine the proper execution of your business strategy. Do you have a leadership strategy?

What is a leadership strategy?

Leadership Strategy is a map for leaders – CEOs, COOs, Chief Operating Officers, Managers and Team Leaders – that aligns leaders with business strategy (corporate vision, objectives and missions) and helps them develop a ground zero plan on how to achieve this results.

It defines the following important aspects:

– How many leaders does a company need?

– What type of leaders does it need?

– Where should they be placed?

– What skills do they need?

– What should their behavior be towards individuals and within teams?

Finding answers to these aspects of leadership can help a leader, a business strategist, and even an organization understand the fault lines that lead to disharmony between their business strategy and strategy execution.

While we’ve talked extensively about forming a business strategy in our previous articles, not much thought has been given to the barriers to implementation. In this article, we understand what causes unsuccessful leadership in practice, and how it can be corrected.

What makes leaders myopic when it comes to business strategy?

Most leaders have strong operational skills and are skilled in the art and science of maintaining the status quo. But new-age companies are characterized by constantly evolving strategies, change management, software hits and trials, and more such disruptions. Business leaders need more than just operational skills to make a business strategy a success.

Before we move on to solutions for how leaders can better meet strategy implementation challenges, let’s look at the three root causes why leaders fail to translate strategies into action.

Excessive focus on internal issues

The first and foremost reason why leaders lose sight of business strategy is that they often become overly focused on internal matters, rather than external matters, with the former including budget reconciliation, team conflict and performance management, and the latter on competitive strategy, technological includes trends and other matters. consumer demands.

According to a strategy implementation study by Bridge Business Consultancy, most leaders spend one day a month reviewing their strategy, and only an hour a month discussing it.

No wonder that implementation on the ground lacks focus on external issues!

Focusing too much on internal issues leads to overlooking the most fundamental competitive and financial context of your business units and strategy in question.

Overestimating the complexity of trade-offs

This constraint is essentially about “doing too much in too little time or with too few resources,” a scenario that most small and medium business leaders struggle with, although this is not that uncommon among business leaders either.

Are you taking on more priority tasks than you can handle? Are your teams struggling with more than 3 to 5 most important projects? The more “high priority” tasks you take on at once, the lower the success rate for those tasks becomes.

Many leaders, especially new business strategists, underestimate the importance of making trade-offs and choices between tasks or projects. Saying ‘no’ is a skill.

Making trade-offs and laying out your priorities are critical to success. If you take a lot into a lot less, you’re doomed. For every idea you say yes to, it must be followed by a no to many others, for the sake of the success of the first.

The mistake business leaders make is overestimating their capabilities and setting unattainable goals. Strictly set goals and challenge assignments can give you psychological assurance that you and your resources are working, but overdoing it almost always leads to burnout and failure to execute the strategy.

Too much emphasis on shifting the organizational chart

Many leaders are guilty of this. It’s about not realizing the importance of ‘organization design’ in business strategy and putting too much brain into the hierarchical aspects. 0Organizational design represents the overall workflow and focus of a company. Some strategists even call it “a living embodiment” of a company.

Instead of focusing on that during strategy execution, many leaders pull up the organizational chart, move people from role to function, and so on. Overemphasizing the organizational chart and shifting parts of the hierarchy in the hope that this will only improve performance can be counterproductive. It may be tempting, but many studies and experiences have shown that its effectiveness is different.

Great business leaders are architects of organizations. They not only look at the organizational chart, but also (rather mainly) at the processes, the management structure, the culture, the technologies, etc.

Are you willing to overcome this myopia in your leadership?

Reverse Mapping: How to Prepare for Better Leadership

The trick is to prepare yourself for leadership on the ground, which means developing a leadership strategy. If you do, you’ll see your failures decrease and your business strategy flourish.

A leadership strategy helps you set boundaries for yourself and your people and broaden your view of a problem. For example, you ensure that you are not too focused internally, but that you become more aware of general sector and market challenges.

As part of their leadership strategy, instead of demonstrating growth objectives, great business leaders describe their market identity, who they serve, why their consumers choose them, and what makes them better than competitors.

To develop a leadership strategy, imagine what a future perfect stage will look like for your business by asking that if everything in business were running at maximum efficiency,

• What would the company culture be like?

• What would be the behavior of leaders?

• What would be the shared beliefs of teams and people in the organization?

Once you’re ready, form your leadership strategy and set your boundaries around the practices your “perfect future” vision entails.

Finding your leadership strategy

The standard assumption that business strategy formulated at the top will be perfectly guided at the ground level is an anomaly. It’s not that clear. Business strategy goes hand in hand with leadership strategy.

Leaders must prepare for the real ground zero needs of their role. It requires careful development of a leadership strategy. Make sure your business strategy requirements don’t just match the leadership competency you possess. Build leadership capabilities and watch your company adapt and succeed.

Aspirants launching a career in business strategy, new leaders, and even seasoned professionals can benefit from an effective leadership strategy. Do you have yours in place?

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