Strategic Leadership Teams

281 Pages·2005·5.42 MB·English

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Becoming a

Strategic Leader

Your Role in Your Organization’s

Enduring Success

Richard L. Hughes

Katherine Colarelli Beatty
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Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes, Richard L.
Becoming a strategic leader : your role in your organization’s enduring success / by
Richard L. Hughes, Katherine Colarelli Beatty.
p. cm.—(Jossey-Bass business & management series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7879-6867-6 (alk. paper)

1. Leadership. 2. Strategic planning. 3. Organizational effectiveness. 4. Success in
business. I. Beatty, Katherine Colarelli, 1965- II. Title. III. Series.
HD57.7.H84 2005
658.4’092—dc22 2004025830
Printed in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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A Joint Publication of
The Jossey-Bass
Business & Management Series
and
The Center for Creative Leadership
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Contents

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xv

The Authors xvii

Introduction 1

1. What Is Strategic Leadership? 7

2. Strategic Thinking 43

3. Strategic Acting 83

4. Strategic Influence 123

5. Strategic Leadership Teams 167

6. Making Strategy a Learning Process

in Your Organization 193

7. Becoming a Strategic Leader 215

Appendix A: Strategic Driver Paired-Voting Form 229

Appendix B: STRAT: Strategic Team Review

and Action Tool 231

Appendix C: STRAT Items and the Learning Process 235
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x CONTENTS
Appendix D: Using STRAT to Develop Your SLT 237

Appendix E: STRAT Norm Data 245

References 249

Index 253

About the Center for Creative Leadership 265
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Preface

We’ve worked together for eight years at the Center for Creative
Leadership, and the focus of our work has been developing the
strategic leadership of individual executives and their teams. Dur-
ing that time we have worked personally with nearly a thousand
different managers and executives—sometimes with heterogeneous
groups from different companies, and sometimes with groups from
the same company.
Most often, that work has been in the context of a program
called Developing the Strategic Leader (DSL). We’ve had the op-
portunity to work with the DSL executives as they’ve struggled to
become better strategic leaders. Weathering this challenge alongside
them has deepened our own understanding about how to become
more strategic. In a general sense, this book reflects our attempt to
put some of the lessons of that program and what we have learned
through our work in it into a more explicit and accessible format.
One thing we have gained from this work is greater clarity
about the challenges managers and executives face in becoming
more effective strategic leaders. Our understanding has come in
part from what executives themselves tell us about their challenges,
which typically fall into the following broad categories: influencing
others more effectively, particularly upwardly and outwardly; think-
ing strategically; achieving a better balance in handling short-term
and long-term pressures; moving from a functional or departmen-
tal perspective to a broader organizational perspective; and actually
creating or influencing organizational strategy.
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xii PREFACE
Another thing we’ve gained from this work is an appreciation
of how the nature of strategic leadership in organizations is chang-
ing, which is reflected in the people who describe these challenges
to us. Specifically, we are finding that managers and executives at
many levels and across many functions are signing up to improve
their effectiveness as strategic leaders. For example, only about 8
percent of DSL participants represent the top leadership of their
organizations; 48 percent are executives, 39 percent are from upper-
middle management, and 5 percent are from middle management.
What does it mean to find such a broad spectrum of managers
and executives intent on developing their effectiveness as strategic
leaders? We believe it’s more than just proactive preparation for
future responsibilities. We believe it reflects something fundamen-
tal about how strategic leadership itself is changing—that strategic
leadership is now the responsibility of many people, not just those
at the top.
The challenges we discuss represent what managers and execu-
tives are struggling with now, not theoretical challenges they might
confront in the future. In that regard, the list presents to us a fairly
reasonable outline of what it means to be strategic. True, it is only
a rather sparse outline. An important part of what we have learned
over the years is how to help managers and executives add depth as
well as breadth to this outline, in ways tailored to their unique de-
velopment needs and circumstances. We’ve also learned a lot about
what facilitates the development of strategic leadership, especially
how the understanding and practice of strategic leadership evolves
in an environment that plays host to an ongoing interplay of ac-
tion, observation, and reflection.
Over time, we have also come to appreciate a certain connected-
ness between the kinds of experiences that facilitate the development
of strategic leadership and those that facilitate the ongoing develop-
ment, implementation, and refinement of organizational strategy
itself. Both have everything to do with viewing strategy as a learning
process, an idea that is central to this book. Part of becoming an effec-
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PREFACE xiii
tive strategic leader involves facilitating that process throughout the
organization (or one’s part of it).
Our title, Becoming a Strategic Leader, underscores a central les-
son we’ve learned in this work: that strategic leadership is about
becoming. It’s about a process of never-ending individual, team, and
organizational learning. Working at CCL and with the DSL pro-
gram has been a privilege, in particular because of the opportunity
we have had to help so many individuals play a more effective role
in the strategic leadership of their organizations. We hope our in-
sights from that work, captured here as best we can, will help them
continue that process—and will reach new audiences as well.
Colorado Springs, Colorado Richard L. Hughes
December 2004 Katherine Colarelli Beatty
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Acknowledgments

This book represents the contributions of many people over many
years, and we’d like to acknowledge our debt to them here.
Our ideas about strategic leadership have been largely formu-
lated in the context of our work in CCL’s Developing the Strategic
Leader (DSL) program. We’ve learned much from executives par-
ticipating in the program, and we’ve learned equally from our col-
leagues on the DSL faculty, who have enriched our understanding
of the nature of strategic leadership. We are particularly indebted
to fellow faculty members Kevin Asbjörnson, Stephanie Trovas,
Laura Quinn, Pam Shipp, Ted Grubb, Dennis Lindoerfer, Gary
Rhodes, Bruce Byington, Jessica Baltes, and Chuck Hinkle for their
insight, savvy, generosity, and comradeship.
Some of our colleagues contributed in unique ways. Bruce Bying-
ton was an indispensable collaborator in helping us formulate and
refine our understanding of strategy as a learning process, the frame-
work on which this book is based. Jessica Baltes had many responsi-
bilities in the DSL program, including an invaluable role in guiding
the DSL research effort cited throughout the book. Judith Steed,
Dennis Lindoerfer, Laura Quinn, and Cory Stern also helped signifi-
cantly in the DSL research effort.
We are indebted to John McGuire for his contributions to our
appreciating the role of culture in leadership strategy. We are indebted
to Patricia O’Connor, Jennifer Martineau, and Davida Sharpe, whose
impressive work with Catholic Healthcare Partners is highlighted in
several chapters. Chuck Palus and David Horth’s work on creative com-
petencies had a significant impact on our own approach to strategic
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