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Practices to Sustain Clarity and Alignment

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Topic: Strategic Leadership

Written by Karin Blair

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Staying steadfast to the strategic direction, driving a plan to ensure progress, and staying flexible enough to respond to emerging challenges is a delicate balance. Ignoring market shifts could be costly, or even fatal to the company (remember when Blockbuster dominated the home movie market?). Yet chasing the latest trends and waffling priorities can undermine any competitive advantage, dilute brand equity, and frustrate employees. Yahoo’s scattered attempts in the search engine, social network, and other markets make for a high profile cautionary tale.    

In my work to understand and inspire an elite level of strategic leadership, I’ve interviewed several innovators, creators, and leaders that are working at the edge of discomfort to amplify their strategic impact - especially in the face of unpredictability. In my Game Changer Interview Series, these leaders shared their insights and real world experiences of how they have navigated the difficult balance of maintaining strategic clarity and disciplined action - while simultaneously adapting to dynamic conditions without losing momentum.

1.  Commit to a Distinct Set of Strategic Choices

Organizations often lose focus when attempting too many initiatives at once. While following market whims may feel safer than pursuing an innovative but unproven strategy, this approach can ultimately spread resources too thin and never create distinct value or competitive advantage (like Yahoo). In this interview series, strategic leaders share the challenge of making those strategic and often high stakes tradeoffs as the first step of strategic impact.

Defining a niche: “The most important strategic step when launching a new product in a new category is to clearly understand ‘what’ or ‘if’ there is a ‘‘white space’ for your product and then to niche your product to own it. If the category doesn’t exist, you get the great opportunity to create it. I don’t shy away from the word niche; I go after it," shared CMO/SVP Adelle Walker in her interview.

Creating more opportunity, not less: “That can be a challenge for some, who are worried that when you aren’t speaking to everyone, you are leaving opportunities for sales on the table,” Adelle added. “However, boldly positioning your product can lead to [... ] more conversions to purchase.”  It’s about committing your resources to advance the core strategic direction, while declining viable alternatives.

Don’t let your competitors sway you:  “Avoid chasing new shiny gold prematurely and being too quick to abandon current strategy to follow others,” said Senior Director Jane Li in her interview, “To me, that is absolutely the worst way to set a strategy, but it happens often because the strategy “feels safer” with the evidence of ‘other companies are doing it.’  But one can’t lead by following the crowd.”

Prioritize the “one-way” decisions: Before committing to a unique strategic direction, CEO and board member Brian Kim advised in his interview asking yourself: Is your decision a one-way or two-way decision?   "In other words, if you make the wrong decision, can you go back and remake the decision? This is crucial. Don’t spend too much time trying to get the right answer on two-way decisions where you can go back and remake the decision without large consequences. It’s the one-way decision where you need to spend the extra time” before you commit.

2.   Balance Strategic Conviction with Feedback

Once the strategic direction has been set, continue to monitor market conditions, operational issues, and other assumptions to respond proactively to challenges. This includes continual research beyond the original findings, assumptions and beliefs upon which you built your strategy. These leaders noted that creating a bold strategic direction with conviction does come with risk (to the organization and your credibility), and it’s important to be open to all changes and indicators, even when they don’t support our original strategy.   

Be aware of predisposition and partiality: “Too often, people can unintentionally bias the research. If you aren’t learning something new and counter to your initial thoughts in your research, you probably didn’t ask the most courageous questions,” observed Adelle.

Have a plan for incorporating new information: “But that is an opportunity; own it boldly, admit it was a new learning, and verify the new insight allowing teams to ask questions and become comfortable with it," she added. “You need to present it across the organization, listen to the objections and disbelief openly, gain alignment, and agree on how this “new insight” will be addressed in the strategic plan.”

3.   Adopt an Iterative Mindset

In volatile and rapidly-changing industries, setting a 5-year strategic plan without deviations and adjustments is unrealistic. Of course, there will be inevitable setbacks - sometimes in the form of failed trials, new regulations, unexpected competition, and more. The organization counts on strategic leaders to see the patterns, create new insights, and find new short-term approaches while still maintaining the strategic long-term direction.

Be candid about probabilities of challenges: “I would often remind the program team ‘things will go wrong, and when they do, we will figure it out, we always do,’” said Jane. “First time when things go wrong, it feels like a tornado, second time it feels like a thunderstorm, the third time it feels like a drizzle. The more the team welcomes uncertainties, the more the team can identify opportunities in chaos for  competitive differentiation.”

Practice strategic thinking from all angles. “Most people make the mistake of rapidly collecting data without thinking through how to frame the critical questions,” added Brian. “If you clearly think through the questions first, it will lead you to the data/ analysis you need. Otherwise you can become awash in data, leading to paralysis.”

4.   Stay Aligned with the Overall Strategic Direction

This is often the most challenging aspect of true strategic leadership, especially during volatility and uncertainty. Our own unconscious need for emotional safety and fear of failure can evoke our reactive tendencies to mitigate the short term challenges, or to abandon our strategic initiatives too quickly. The challenge is maintaining the clear focus on the long-term strategic outcomes without allowing short term detours or recalibrations undermine the long-term objectives.

Acknowledge the practical realities: “The short term pressures are what they are,” said CEO Kevin Stealey in his interview. “Sometimes, you will need to trade-off the long-term for short-term results. Other times, maybe it’s not as important. The key is to discuss it and intentionally decide what is best. If it’s a tactical execution, it probably won’t kill you long term.”

Align each strategic trade-off with the overarching direction:  “I think the bigger issue is scope creep,” Kevin observed. “A good opportunity comes up - a new trend or technology to leverage. A customer needs something from us and we want to be customer centric. That’s where you have to be strategic and constantly help the organization prioritize to make sure you are headed in the right direction. The reality is that it might even be an action that is technically 'on strategy,' but it just might not be the highest priority to operate on.”

5.   Build and Sustain Organizational Alignment

The success of the strategy also relies on the interdependent efforts by linked verticals and complex organizational structures. Gaining commitment from teams and alignment up, across, and down the organization is critical to avoid misunderstandings, conflicting priorities, and even resistance and conflict.

Address questions, concerns, and resistance: And as Kevin points out, this becomes exponentially more difficult when there are varying levels of trust in the plan. Members may be wondering: How can we execute this? What happens if it doesn’t work? As a strategic leader, “can you work in a ‘connection’ phase to truly get the best thinking on the table and everyone committed efficiently, while shifting into the 'conviction’ stage when we need action to move us forward?”

Implement consistent communications: Ultimately, a strategic plan “must be owned by those who execute it,” said CEO and board member Nir Nimrodi in his interview.  “The CEO, her/his team and the entire company need to be aligned. Achieving such alignment is not done by sharing slides in a town hall meeting. It requires constant reminders, adjustments and reinforcement."

Maintain resilience: While the ability to adapt to internal and external changes is critical, Nir noted that “the hardest part is to not stop and continuously adapt. Being relentless about implementation of a plan is not an exercise that provides a swift reward. Make the effort daily so people will later say you got lucky.”

Developing a Mindset for Strategic Clarity AND Adaptability

Remaining steadfast to the strategic direction requires the courage of conviction - it’s not without high stakes decisions, unpredictability, resistance and risk. As Brian observed: if these decisions were easy, they would have been decided further down the organization.  The leaders that I interviewed have all experienced the frustration, struggles, and challenges of successfully driving strategic change and creating meaningful impact.

By committing to a clear, focused strategy, aligning teams across the organization, continuously monitoring a dynamic landscape, and embracing an iterative mindset, leaders can lead the organization towards the strategic north star, while being nimble and responsive to changes and disruptions. In our evolution as a strategic leader use these key steps to develop a mindset for strategic agility to create a future that does not yet exist.

 

Subscribe to the Game Changer Interview Series to read the original interviews and gain insights each month to how real strategic leaders navigate the challenges to deliver bold results and create lasting impact. If you’re curious about your strengths and stage of leadership development, take the Strategic Impact Quiz. 

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