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Leadership Theories, Transformational and Strategic Leaders, Proactive Law, Scenario Planning, and more By: @yavar121
Your words are among your greatest tools. They're a window into your vision, your values and your abilities. So, whether you're running a giant organization or just trying to herd a group toward a certain outcome, there are messages you need to communicate constantly in order to lead effectively.
Start every day planning to say each of these things to at least one person, and watch the results:
1. "This is the situation."
People want to know what's going on. Odds are, they'll find out anyway, or worse, fill in the gaps with conjecture. When you keep important things excessively close, you sap morale, rob yourself of your team's insights, and make people feel undervalued. Sound crazy to let them in on everything? Walmart founder Sam Walton did it for decades, and he did okay.
2. "Here is the plan."
A leader is supposed to lead. People will offer great suggestions, especially if you're saying and doing everything else on this list, but you need to be able to make decisions and stand behind them. Your team needs to know where you're trying to take them, and how. Also, don't forget the crucial corollary: You need to be able to say "no," especially to moves that would be inconsistent with your plan.
3. "What do you need?"
This is crucial for two reasons. First, people need to know that you care about them on personal and professional levels, and that you want them to succeed. Second, if you've put together a great plan, you need to leverage every person's abilities to the maximum extent possible. If they are not able to give it their all, you want to know why.
4. "Tell me more."
Let people know you're more interested in finding good answers than hearing yourself speak. Give others implicit permission to share their opinions--or heck, invite them explicitly, if you have to. Staying quiet is an invitation for others to offer ideas and insights.
5. "Remember our values."
You can't possibly stare over the shoulder of every person making decisions that affect your organization, but you can remind them to make choices that the rest of their team will be proud of. Reminding people of your values requires, of course, that you can actually articulate shared values.
6. "I trust you."
If you can't trust the people on your team, then they shouldn't be on your team. You need to trust their integrity, their judgment, their confidence and their passion--and you need to ensure that they understand how much you depend on them.
7. "You can count on me."
The flip side of that last point is true as well. If your team can't trust you, they shouldn't do you the great honor of letting you lead them. So tell them you've got their back, and then work like hell to fulfill the promises you make.
8. "We can do better."
One of the toughest, most crucial parts of leadership is to push your team to a higher standard than they might set for themselves. That means congratulating them when they do well, but also not coddling them when they don't live up to their potential. It also means admitting when you fail to live up to those standards, too.
9. "Let's celebrate!"
Don't create a culture in which the only reward for great work is more work. Instead, make it a practice to celebrate your wins, both large and small. This can mean big parties and bonuses, but it can be just as important to call people out for great work and congratulate them for their milestones--both professional and personal.
From Inc.com
Fred R. David Strategic Management Chapter 5 Strategies in Action
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Fred R. David Strategic Management Chapter 3 External Assessment
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Fred R. David Strategic Management Capter 1 Over View
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Pitfalls in Strategic Planning
• Using strategic planning to gain control over decisions and resources
• Doing strategic planning only to satisfy accreditation or regulatory requirements
• Too hastily moving from mission development to strategy formulation
• Failing to communicate the plan to employees, who continue working in the dark
• Top managers making many intuitive decisions that conflict with the formal plan
• Top managers not actively supporting the strategic-planning process
• Failing to use plans as a standard for measuring performance
• Delegating planning to a “planner” rather than involving all managers
• Failing to involve key employees in all phases of planning
• Failing to create a collaborative climate supportive of change
• Viewing planning as unnecessary or unimportant
• Becoming so engrossed in current problems that insufficient or no planning is done
• Being so formal in planning that flexibility and creativity are stifled
Why Some Firms Do No Strategic Planning
• Lack of knowledge or experience in strategic planning—No training in strategic planning.
• Poor reward structures—When an organization assumes success, it often fails to reward success. When failure occurs, then the firm may punish.
• Firefighting—An organization can be so deeply embroiled in resolving crises and firefighting that it reserves no time for planning.
• Waste of time—Some firms see planning as a waste of time because no marketable product is produced. Time spent on planning is an investment.
• Too expensive—Some organizations see planning as too expensive in time and money.
• Laziness—People may not want to put forth the effort needed to formulate a plan.
Nonfinancial Benefits
Besides helping firms avoid financial demise, strategic management offers other tangible benefits, such as an enhanced awareness of external threats, an improved understanding of competitors’ strategies, increased employee productivity, reduced resistance to change, and a clearer understanding of performance–reward relationships.
Strategic management enhances the problem-prevention capabilities of organizations because it promotes interaction among managers at all divisional and functional levels.
Firms that have nurtured their managers and employees, shared organizational objectives with them, empowered them to help improve the product or service, and recognized their contributions can turn to them for help in a pinch because of this interaction.
A great benefit of strategic management, then, is the opportunity that the process provides to empower individuals.
Empowerment is the act of strengthening employees’ sense of effectiveness by encouraging them to participate in decision making and to exercise initiative and imagination, and rewarding them for doing so.
Although making good strategic decisions is the major responsibility of an organization’s owner or chief executive officer, both managers and employees must also be involved in strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation activities.
Participation is a key to gaining commitment for needed changes.
Policies
Policies are the means by which annual objectives will be achieved. Policies include guidelines, rules, and procedures established to support efforts to achieve stated objectives. Policies are guides to decision making and address repetitive or recurring situations.
Policies are most often stated in terms of management, marketing, finance/accounting, production/operations, research and development, and computer information systems activities.
Policies can be established at the corporate level and apply to an entire organization at the divisional level and apply to a single division, or at the functional level and apply to particular operational activities or departments.
Policies, like annual objectives, are especially important in strategy implementation because they outline an organization’s expectations of its employees and managers.
Policies allow consistency and coordination within and between organizational departments.
Long-Term Objectives
Objectives can be defined as specific results that an organization seeks to achieve in pursuing its basic mission. Long-term means more than one year.
Objectives are essential for organizational success because they state direction; aid in evaluation; create synergy; reveal priorities; focus coordination; and provide a basis for effective planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling activities.
Objectives should be challenging, measurable, consistent, reasonable, and clear. In a multidimensional firm, objectives should be established for the overall company and for each division.
In a global economic recession, a few opportunities and threats that face many firms are listed here:
• Availability of capital can no longer be taken for granted.
• Consumers expect green operations and products.
• Marketing has moving rapidly to the Internet.
• Consumers must see value in all that they consume.
• Global markets offer the highest growth in revenues.
• As the price of oil has collapsed, oil rich countries are focused on supporting their own economies, rather than seeking out investments in other countries.
• Too much debt can crush even the best firms.
• Layoffs are rampant among many firms as revenues and profits fall and credit sources dry up.
• The housing market is depressed.
• Demand for health services does not change much in a recession.
• Dramatic slowdowns in consumer spending are apparent in virtually all sectors, except some discount retailers and restaurants.
• Emerging countries' economies could manage to grow 5 percent in 2009, but that is three full percentage points lower than in 2007.
• U.S. unemployment rates continue to rise to 10 percent on average.
• Borrowers are faced with much bigger collateral requirements than in years past.
• Equity lines of credit often now are not being extended.
• Firms that have cash or access to credit have a competitive advantage over debt-laden firms.
• Discretionary spending has fallen dramatically; consumers buy only essential items; this has crippled many luxury and recreational businesses such as boating and cycling.
• The stock market crash of 2008 left senior citizens with retirement worries, so millions of people cut back on spending to the bare essentials.
• The double whammy of falling demand and intense price competition is plaguing most firms, especially those with high fixed costs.
• The business world has moved from a credit-based economy to a cash-based economy.
• There is reduced capital spending in response to reduced consumer spending.
Mission Statements
Mission statements are “enduring statements of purpose that distinguish one business from other similar firms. A mission statement identifies the scope of a firm’s operations in product and market terms.”
It addresses the basic question that faces all strategists: “What is our business?”
A clear mission statement describes the values and priorities of an
organization. Developing a mission statement compels strategists to think about the nature and scope of present operations and to assess the potential attractiveness of future markets and activities.
A mission statement broadly charts the future direction of an organization.
A mission statement is a constant reminder to its employees of why the organization exists and what the founders envisioned when they put their fame and fortune at risk to breathe life into their dreams.
To survive, all organizations must astutely identify and adapt to change.
The strategicmanagement process is aimed at allowing organizations to adapt effectively to change over the long run.
Strategy evaluation is the final stage in strategic management. Managers desperately need to know when particular strategies are not working well; strategy evaluation is the primary means for obtaining this information.
Three fundamental strategy-evaluation activities are:
(1) reviewing external and internal factors that are the bases for current strategies,
(2) measuring performance, and
(3) taking corrective actions.
Strategy evaluation is needed because success today is no guarantee of success tomorrow! Success always creates new and different problems; complacent organizations experience demise.
Strategy implementation requires a firm to establish annual objectives, devise policies, motivate employees, and allocate resources so that formulated strategies can be executed.
Strategy implementation includes developing a strategy-supportive culture, creating an effective organizational structure, redirecting marketing efforts, preparing budgets, developing and utilizing information systems, and linking employee compensation to organizational performance.
Fred R. David Strategic Management Chapter 6 Strategy Analysis & Choices
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Fred R. David Strategic Management Chapter 4 Internal Assessment
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Fred R. David Strategic Management Chapter 2 Vision & Mission
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Guidelines for Effective Strategic Management
1. It should be a people process more than a paper process.
2. It should be a learning process for all managers and employees.
3. It should be words supported by numbers rather than numbers supported by words.
4. It should be simple and nonroutine.
5. It should vary assignments, team memberships, meeting formats, and even the planning calendar.
6. It should challenge the assumptions underlying the current corporate strategy.
7. It should welcome bad news.
8. It should welcome open-mindness and a spirit of inquiry and learning.
9. It should not be a bureaucratic mechanism.
10. It should not become ritualistic, stilted, or orchestrated.
11. It should not be too formal, predictable, or rigid.
12. It should not contain jargon or arcane planning language.
13. It should not be a formal system for control.
14. It should not disregard qualitative information.
15. It should not be controlled by “technicians.”
16. Do not pursue too many strategies at once.
17. Continually strengthen the “good ethics is good business” policy.
Why Some Firms Do No Strategic Planning
• Content with success—Particularly if a firm is successful, individuals may feel there is no need to plan because things are fine as they stand. But success today does not guarantee success tomorrow.
• Fear of failure—By not taking action, there is little risk of failure unless a problem is urgent and pressing. Whenever something worthwhile is attempted, there is some risk of failure.
• Overconfidence—As managers amass experience, they may rely less on formalized planning. Rarely, however, is this appropriate. Being overconfident or overestimating experience can bring demise. Forethought is rarely wasted and is often the mark of professionalism.
• Prior bad experience—People may have had a previous bad experience with planning, that is, cases in which plans have been long, cumbersome, impractical, or inflexible. Planning, like anything else, can be done badly.
• Self-interest—When someone has achieved status, privilege, or self-esteem through effectively using an old system, he or she often sees a new plan as a threat.
• Fear of the unknown—People may be uncertain of their abilities to learn new skills, of their aptitude with new systems, or of their ability to take on new roles.
• Honest difference of opinion—People may sincerely believe the plan is wrong. They may view the situation from a different viewpoint, or they may have aspirations for themselves or the organization that are different from the plan. Different people in different jobs have different perceptions of a situation.
• Suspicion—Employees may not trust management.
Greenley stated that strategic management offers the following benefits:
1. It allows for identification, prioritization, and exploitation of opportunities.
2. It provides an objective view of management problems.
3. It represents a framework for improved coordination and control of activities.
4. It minimizes the effects of adverse conditions and changes.
5. It allows major decisions to better support established objectives.
6. It allows more effective allocation of time and resources to identified opportunities.
7. It allows fewer resources and less time to be devoted to correcting erroneous or ad hoc decisions.
8. It creates a framework for internal communication among personnel.
9. It helps integrate the behavior of individuals into a total effort.
10. It provides a basis for clarifying individual responsibilities.
11. It encourages forward thinking.
12. It provides a cooperative, integrated, and enthusiastic approach to tackling problems and opportunities.
13. It encourages a favorable attitude toward change.
14. It gives a degree of discipline and formality to the management of a business
Financial Benefits
Businesses using strategic-management concepts show significant improvement in sales, profitability, and productivity compared to firms without systematic planning activities.
High-performing firms tend to do systematic planning to prepare for future fluctuations in their external and internal environments.
Firms with planning systems more closely resembling strategic-management theory generally exhibit superior long-term financial performance relative to their industry.
High-performing firms seem to make more informed decisions with good anticipation of both short- and long-term consequences.
Benefits of Strategic Management
Strategic management allows an organization to be more proactive than reactive in shaping its own future; it allows an organization to initiate and influence (rather than just respond to) activities—and thus to exert control over its own destiny.
Small business owners, chief executive officers, presidents, and managers of many for-profit and nonprofit organizations have recognized and realized the benefits of strategic management.
Annual Objectives
Annual objectives are short-term milestones that organizations must achieve to reach longterm objectives. Like long-term objectives, annual objectives should be measurable, quantitative, challenging, realistic, consistent, and prioritized.
They should be established at the corporate, divisional, and functional levels in a large organization. Annual objectives should be stated in terms of management, marketing, finance/accounting, production/operations, research and development, and management information systems (MIS) accomplishments.
A set of annual objectives is needed for each long-term objective. Annual objectives are especially important in strategy implementation, whereas long-term objectives are particularly important in strategy formulation.
Annual objectives represent the basis for allocating resources.
Internal Strengths and Weaknesses
Internal strengths and internal weaknesses are an organization’s controllable activities that are performed especially well or poorly. They arise in the management, marketing, finance/accounting, production/operations, research and development, and management information systems activities of a business.
Identifying and evaluating organizational strengths and weaknesses in the functional areas of a business is an essential strategic management activity.
Organizations strive to pursue strategies that capitalize on internal
strengths and eliminate internal weaknesses.
Internal factors can be determined in a number of ways, including computing ratios, measuring performance, and comparing to past periods and industry averages.
External Opportunities and Threats
External opportunities and external threats refer to economic, social, cultural, demographic, environmental, political, legal, governmental, technological, and competitive trends and events that could significantly benefit or harm an organization in the future.
Opportunities and threats are largely beyond the control of a single organization—thus the word external.
Vision Statements
Vision statement answers the question “What do we want to become?” Developing a vision statement is often considered the first step in strategic planning.
Many vision statements are a single sentence. For example, “Our vision is to take care of your vision.” or a long sentence like: Our mission is to operate the best specialty retail business in America, regardless of the product we sell.
Strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation activities occur at three hierarchical levels in a large organization: corporate, divisional or strategic business unit, and functional.
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Strategy implementation often is called the “action stage” of strategic management. Implementing strategy means mobilizing employees and managers to put formulated strategies into action.
Often considered to be the most difficult stage in strategic management, strategy implementation requires personal discipline, commitment, and sacrifice.
Successful strategy implementation hinges upon managers’ ability to motivate employees, which is more an art than a science. Strategies formulated but not implemented serve no useful purpose.
Strategy-formulation decisions commit an organization to specific products, markets, resources, and technologies over an extended period of time. Strategies determine long-term competitive advantages. For better or worse, strategic decisions have major multifunctional consequences and enduring effects on an organization.
Top managers have the best perspective to understand fully the ramifications of strategy formulation decisions; they have the authority to commit the resources necessary for implementation.