Recently, my client defined their desired future state as a goal of profitability and majority market share in a rapidly growing technology industry. Not a bad goal - who wouldn’t want that? Except that profitability doesn’t provide enough clarity of direction. There’s no strategic choice in how to actually achieve that profitability and market share. Unfortunately, the lack of clear strategic direction ultimately created chaos and mis-alignment - quite the opposite of what my client intended.
When there was no strategic “north star” to inform a focused set of initiatives, any option that promised profitability or market share was on the table. All potential (and loosely tethered) technology opportunities were evaluated either by simply creating a ranked choice based on projected financial results - or heavily influenced by the more outspoken leaders within the organization.
With no clear direction of where the company wanted to go, strategically, this created a scenario where:
- The organization was generating revenue - but not distinct customer value
- Teams were pursuing disparate goals but didn’t understand what the larger purpose was
- They weren’t developing a competitive advantage in a highly crowded field
- Leaders were frustrated when their colleagues’ priorities weren’t aligned with their own
So what went wrong?
When Planners Create Strategy
In the four stages to becoming a transformational game changing strategic leader (GCSL), many leaders move first into being a:
- Thinker (shifting their focus from short-term to long-term goals)
- to a Planner (creating that long-range plan for focus and alignment)
- to Creators (envisioning strategies that embrace uncertainty and complexity)
- to Transformers (creating and executing bold and disruptive strategies)
Unconscious limitations during the Planner Stage of GCSL
In this stage, leaders tend to develop plans based on previous “templates” for success and proven results. This tendency is natural - why wouldn’t they leverage the skills that have fueled their success so far? As a result, Planners may unconsciously try to avoid or reduce the unknownable - oftentimes at the expense of innovation and game-changing strategies. Subsequently, they run the risk of playing the same game as their competitors - each only simply incrementing their way into the future.
However, when they are tasked with setting the strategic direction of the company (business unit or function) in a difficult-to-predict industry, they too often skip over the strategic choices needed to guide next level decisions and instead go straight to concrete goals (such as revenue, market share, or ROI). It can be difficult for Planners (and other strategic leaders) to embrace what they can’t control - but a financial objective isn’t a strategy. It’s a desired outcome of the strategy.
All companies want to be profitable and productive. What Planners need to consider is how their organization is going to create distinct value - and how to do it differently from their competitors? Only a true strategic direction can provide the clarity needed at the highest level so that leaders throughout the organization can make aligned next-level decisions.
Where a Strategic Plan and Strategic Direction Intersect
That’s not to say we don’t need the skills of our strategic Planners - we most definitely do! While the strategy creates clarity of direction, the strategic plan will bring the clarity of action. Long range plans provide the focused specificity needed to set budgets, allocate resources, and set timeframes in order to achieve tangible results.
But much like rowers together in a rowboat, you’ll get where you’re going faster if everyone rows in the same direction at the same time. This is especially critical in larger organizations with multiple teams and multiple initiatives running simultaneously. The larger the row boat, the more important the strategic direction to stay aligned in action.
How Planners Can Amplify Their Strategic Impact
My client was ready to step into the next phase of game-changing leadership, but was unsure how to create a Strategic Plan that both aligned short-term actions with long-term direction and also set them apart from their competitors. As with all my clients, I asked her to start with 3 crucial questions:
- What is your current state (both internally within the organization and externally in the industry)?
- What is your desired future state (what is the strategic direction for the organization)?
- How will your organization get there?
Question 1 was relatively straightforward, but Question 2 was where my client (the Planner) began to experiment with “strategic choice” - an integrated set of choices about where to play, how to win and the distinct capabilities and systems that will differentiate their organization from the competition.
As leaders, setting the strategic direction requires us to accept the discomfort that rises in the face of not knowing. The “gap of emergence,” between your current state and desired state, can be uncomfortable for strategic leaders - especially for Planners who want to have a clear path from “here to there.”
But we cannot control and resolve this uncertainty, especially when it comes to dynamic industries such as emerging tech and the cutting edge of life sciences. If we are to create impact and disrupt the norms and rules of the game of an industry, we must challenge ourselves to envision a different way. By setting ourselves apart, we can gain a clear competitive advantage and create meaningful transformations.
Setting the strategy is not without risk. Choosing an uncertain path can put your organization (and your personal reputation) on the line. So it’s not surprising that leaders can struggle with navigating the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). Nevertheless, being a strategic leader requires us to embrace the risk and uncertainty. It’s your greatest opportunity to amplify your strategic impact.
How we hold the gap matters. Once Planners embrace the fact that they cannot “plan” their way through uncertainty, but rather must provide guiding principles first, then the specificity will soon follow. In my Game Changer Series, I’ve interviewed several strategic leaders, such as Wayne Woodard, where they have shared the challenges of shifting from control to trust - and how that opened up a new path for innovation and impact.
Ultimately, the strategic plan is mission critical, but it relies on your strategic direction to guide the highest-level strategic choices. Providing clarity of direction enables all members of your organization to make aligned decisions and take game-changing action.
Are You a Strategic Leader?
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