The Leadership Strategy: Why Don't You Have One?

In the last article, I talked about the difference between an organizational strategy and a Leadership Strategy.?Without a Leadership Strategy, an organizational strategy cannot reach its full potential.?

Let me give you an example from my experience. I was brought into General Electric to consult with their senior leaders on leadership communication.?This was a few years after Jack Welch became CEO.?

He was pushing great changes in the company, and leadership was critical to making those changes sink in and last.?He said, “One of my biggest challenges is saturation, driving motivation down into the DNA of the company. I don’t want people simply reacting to the changes.?I want them to be excited about them.?My direct reports are motivated to push for change.?If they aren’t, they won’t be here. But how do I get that motivation down through all the levels and functions of GE?”?

Both he and I didn’t know it, but he was describing a problem for which there was a solution, though it took me years to find the solution. ???

One solution was the Leadership Strategy. After decades of consulting with leaders in scores of other organizations as well as writing and publishing five books and six study guides, I eventually fleshed out the necessities and requirements of the Leadership Talk. ?

In a nutshell, this is how you can put together a Leadership Strategy for your own purposes.?

First, know that a key aspect of every Leadership Strategy is the needs of the leaders who are carrying out that strategy.?Critical convergence. ?The drive shaft of all Leadership Strategies is the needs of the people who will execute the strategy.?Last week, you got a good idea about how to talk with those people about their needs.?Remember, I said it did not matter what needs they shared with you. I just want to get you into the habit of identifying and relating to their needs.??

Don’t think this is like the joke of the manufacturing foreman who took a course on relationship building and said to a recalcitrant employee, “You’re a lousy worker.?You were lousy yesterday.?You’re lousy today.?And you’ll probably be lousy tomorrow. .... By the way, how’s your mother?”?

The Leadership Strategy and Leadership Talks are not styles of leadership or ways of manipulating people.?If people think we are manipulating them when we apply the processes associated with the Strategy and The Talk, they’ll resent and distrust us.?These are not manipulative processes, but instead processes that cement relationships based on both parties exercising free choice and leading to more results, faster results, and “more, faster” continually.???

Now you are ready for the next step: linking their needs to the organizational strategy. This is a vital link.?When done right, it plugs the business strategy into the powerful circuitry of their convictions.?Few leaders make this linkage—to their detriment.????

The linkage is made this way:?Break your organizational strategy down into its two, three or four essential components then ascertain how those components provide solutions to the problems posed by the needs of your cause leaders.?(Every need is a problem crying out for a solution.)?

For instance, one of the great business strategies of the past quarter decade was Jack Welch’s for General Electric. When he first became CEO in the early 80s, he said that each GE business was going to be number one or number two in its marketplace.?If not, that business will be fixed so it does become number one or two; or if it could not be fixed, it would be sold.?It was a classic organization strategy: simple, comprehensive, challenging.??

Some might argue that it was a goal, not a strategy.?But when you look more closely at it, it indeed was a true a strategy.?Goals are outcomes. Strategies show how to attain those outcomes. GE’s goals, as I see them, were to be one of the most highly profitable major corporations in the world.?In that regard, being number one or number two was a strategic means of achieving such profitability.?

This may seem like ancient history, but it being old is its worth, because that strategic was GE’s focus during Welch’s entire career there. ?

Yet as far as I know it was not underpinned by a Leadership Strategy which would have solve Welch’s “saturation” problem.?

What I am about to teach you is not a vetting of Welch’s strategy or GE’s role or the leaders’ implementation of it.?I am using that strategy simply as an example to help you see how you can link a business strategy to needs.????

Let’s say the strategy of your organization involves having each business in the organization be number one or two; and if it isn’t, be fixed or sold.?The essential components of the business strategy then are (a) being number one or two (b) getting fixed (c) being sold.?

Now put yourself in the place of the people who have to make the strategy work, not just liked the senior leaders who reported to Welch but like the small-unit leaders and middle managers.?What do they think about such a strategy??

You the senior leaders may welcome the strategy and believe it will make their organization more efficient and productive.??

However, the small-unit leaders and middle managers may think it stinks!?They may think it could be the worst thing that ever happened to them.?They could see the strategy as the sharp edge of job cuts and their job is on the block. They could see that strategy setting them up to fail. If they see these things, do you think they will be cause leaders for the strategy??Might they not be focused on making sure it doesn’t succeed—or that is just disappears??Clearly, if these reactions are the case, a Leadership Strategy is needed here.?

The fact is that unless you augment your organizational strategy with a Leadership Strategy, you’ll be bucking strong headwinds.?That’s because business strategies often tend to threaten the status quo. Just because it looks great on paper, just because analysts outside the organization bless it, doesn’t mean that the very people who must implement it won’t see it as a nuisance or even a threat.?

Staying with the example: to augment a business strategy that has the components of (a) being number one or two (b) getting fixed (c) being sold, you must have those components provide solutions to the problems of your cause leaders’ needs.??

Let’s say the needs of your cause leaders involve job security, financial security, and career advancement.?Unless the components of the business strategy can provide solutions to the problems of their needs, you will not have ardent cause leaders.?That’s what happened to Welch: He had a great deal of difficulty initiating the strategy, mainly because of a consorted attack by GE’s status quo, many of the supervisors and middle managers throughout the company passively resisting or struggling actively against implementing the strategy.?We know he persisted, and as it turned out over the years, the components of his strategy became solutions to the needs of many leaders who stuck with him, needs such as job security (the company became a magnet for headhunters), financial security (many middle managers and supervisors became millionaires dues to GE stock options), and career advancement (being a GE leader had powerful cache in the job market.)?Evidence that Welch would’ve been greatly helped with a Leadership Strategy.????

The point is that unless your components can be seen as solutions for the needs of your cause leaders, you won’t have a successful business strategy, or you will have to spend an inordinate amount of time and resources and take a lot of trouble making it successful.???

Identify the key components of your business strategy and have those components be solutions to the needs of your cause leaders. ?

This is only the first step in developing a Leadership Strategy.?Next month, we’ll put together a five-step plan for developing a comprehensive Leadership Strategy that you can use for the rest of your career.?

Besides having lectured about the Leadership Talk at MIT Sloan School of Management, Columbia University, Wake Forest, Villanova, Williams, Middlebury, I also brought the Leadership Talk to leaders in these organizations: Abbott, Ameritech, Anheuser-Busch, Armstrong World Industries, AT&T, BancOne, BASF, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Betz Laboratories, Bose, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Campbell Sales, Canadian Government, CNA, DuPont, Eaton Corporation, Exelon, First Energy, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, GTE, Hershey Foods, Houghton Mifflin, IBM, Meals-on-Wheels, Merck, Miller Brewing Company, NASA, PaineWebber, Polaroid, Price Waterhouse, Roadway Express, Sears Roebuck, Spalding International, Southern Company, The United Nations, Unilever, UPS, Union Carbide, United Dominion Industries, U.S. Steel, Vermont State Police, Warner Lambert — and more. ?

Copyright ? The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.

Brent Filson is the founder of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc., which for 37-years has helped thousands of leaders of all ranks and functions in top companies worldwide achieve sustained increases in hard, measured results. He has published 23 books and many scores of articles on leadership. His mission is to have leaders replace their traditional presentations with his specially developed, motivating process call the Leadership Talk. www.brentfilson.com and theleadershiptalk.com