Strategic leadership provides the vision and direction for the growth and success of an organization. To successfully deal with change, all executives need the skills and tools for both strategy formulation and implementation. Managing change and ambiguity requires strategic leaders who not only provide a sense of direction, but who can also build ownership and alignment within their organisation to implement change.
[edit] Processes
Building prepared minds on a large scale is critical for companies needing to reset the strategic direction and transform the organization. Getting employees pointed in the right direction with the ability to learn and adapt concurrently helps ensure the strategy will deliver what leaders are looking for.
Success requires a different way of thinking about how to marshal the resources of the organization to formulate and execute strategy. This way of thinking balances a focused analytical perspective with the human dimension of strategy making (as documented by the Park Li Group). These practices, coupled with a commitment of management time to engage the entire business in a strategy dialogue, lay the foundation for building winning organizations that can define, commit, adjust and adapt strategy quickly[3].
[edit] Strategy execution
The analytical dimension and the human dimension
Leaders face the continuing challenge of how they can meet the expectations of those who placed them there. Addressing these expectations usually takes the form of strategic decisions and actions. For a strategy to succeed, the leader must be able to adjust it as conditions require. But leaders cannot learn enough, fast enough, and do enough on their own to effectively adapt the strategy and then define, shape and execute the organizational response. If leaders are to win they must rely on the prepared minds of employees throughout the organization to