Strategic leadership provides techniques that help organizations focus when determining their purpose and identifying the best business practices necessary to remain competitive and relevant. The ability to learn and adapt has become vital for long-term sustainability. Failure to adapt to changing technology, climate conditions, and economic factors can place an organization at risk of becoming obsolete.

Sustained success requires a different way of thinking about how resources are managed and how services are delivered. Strategic leadership balances a focused analytical perspective with the human dimension of strategy-making (as documented by the Park Li Group). It is important to engage the entire organization in strategic dialogue to build a strong foundation for success. This enables organizations to define, commit to, adjust, and adapt their strategies quickly as needed.

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 understand the strategic intent and then both carry out the current strategy and adapt it in real-time. The challenge is not only producing a winning strategy at a point in time but getting employees smart enough and motivated enough to execute the strategy and change it as conditions change. This requires the leader to focus as much on the process used to develop the strategy – the human dimension, as the content of the strategy – the analytical dimension.

Leaders recognize the need to incorporate aspects of both the analytical and human dimensions to effectively drive the organization forward, but how this insight translates into action varies significantly from leader to leader.

These differences are largely driven by the bias leaders have for how they divide their time between the two dimensions. This bias is reflected in how leaders answer questions such as the following:

How leaders answer these questions will ultimately impact their ability to deliver a winning strategy because their responses indicate whether and how they build and lead an organization that is aligned and committed to a particular agenda.

Question 1: What is their primary role as a chief strategist?