Leadership Distinction #17: Strategy

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The secret to rewriting business strategy in the pandemic era: co-authors.

The single most difficult thing for the person who seeks to lead is to imagine a specifically better tomorrow to pursue. But you have to do it, in order to execute the 2nd most difficult task for a leader  – to influence others to follow you to that place in time.

Advice on how to get there is something for which an infinite number of consultants and advisors will happily take a fee, in assisting you with crafting your Strategy.  But occasionally, a small investment of time for reading may serve you just as well. Consider:

The wise would-be follower screens you to see if your ‘offer’ is credible and in addition gauges whether your bearing holds sufficient promise to place a trust in you, to follow you when they otherwise do not have to. Followers also size you up as to whether you have a clue how to get where you say you want to go.

Today, prospective followers also want to know if you will let them climb into the front seat with you. Are you looking for partners to watch the horizon along side you, to revise the charted course as necessary and to even occasionally take the wheel? Are you seasoned enough to recognize that yesterday’s solitary command & control management tactics are unwelcome and just won’t cut it in this increasingly complex world?

When you have set the overall objective, have identified precisely whom you want to be served by your business vision, and have resolved why your customer proposition will top the many other choices your targeted prospects will have, then you will have built the core of a working Strategy. And when you have opened the front door to those now on the team and welcomed their co-authorship of the chapters yet-to-be-written about the unfolding story of intended change in the world you will have erected the strong but flexible attributes of a winning Strategy. 

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Episode 17