Strategy- What is the point?

Leadership is never easy. We are always having to hold competing and what often feels like irreconcilable tensions.

For example, we sometimes find contradictory requests in our client’s work. On the one hand, people will say, ‘We don’t need another strategy, just a shared plan for implementation’, or ‘Tell us what’s needed to see a real shift in the system.’ Others in the same system will ask, ‘What’s the evidence?’ or ‘Why should we change?’ Clearly, nobody can change and decide whether to change at the same time, although common pressures may be driving both conversations.

Wisdom is often elliptical; it embraces truths that can seem contradictory. Think about how justice, mercy, freedom, laws, love, and truth play out. This is key to good systems leadership – how can we focus on delivery now and plan for long-term survival?

In health and care, one day, we see splashed across the national and local media, the acute pressures of ambulance response targets, GP appointments and waiting lists, and the next, articles bemoaning the parlous state of our public health. The demand for urgent action today can be overwhelming. But how do we know if the immediate and obvious actions are right in the longer term?

Good leadership holds tensions. I’ve introduced 

Peter Kestenbaum’s Leadership Diamond in a previous one-minute read email series. It proposes that great leadership exists in the space where we hold the tensions between the poles of how we see things: vision and reality in one dimension, and how we do things in the other: courage (‘Just do it’) and ethics (how we do it collaboratively). Wisdom is knowing how to embrace the tensions.

In this email series, I want to focus on strategy and how we hold the tension between “where on earth are we going” and “just doing something”. Good strategy is defined as ‘a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.’ So, how do we find the time, space and capacity to do the work?

The strategy development process is a key learning opportunity for organisations, but it should not be a long-winded theoretical exercise that produces more documents for the virtual bookshelf. As Eisenhower said: ‘Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.’ When the strategy development process allows for real engagement and creativity, people and their organisations can become highly energised, and real change can flow.

Over the next few one-minute reads, we will look at how you can do that and what might get in the way. To whet your appetite, why not have a look at this short case study – of strategy at speed for a national healthcare body?

Greater insights for leaders at our FREE webinar

Join us on 26th March, from 3 pm to 5 pm, when we will host a FREE webinar on Strategy in Complex systems with collaborators Terry Young and Andrew Liles.

To register for this FREE webinar, please email office@tricordant.com. Feel free to extend this invitation to colleagues interested in this topic.