More Impact, More Easily

9System nine: Strategy

In a training workshop I ran recently, a participant asked a terrific question: ‘How can we be strategic when we are so busy, and everything keeps changing?’ Heads nodded around the room in response. I mean, wouldn't it be lovely if we could take two days off to think about strategy and then set it for the next three years and expect it all to run like clockwork. What a luxury that would be. But it's not our reality, is it?

The reality is that strategy sucks. In most companies, the corporate strategy has little bearing on the work that happens at the front line or in the middle of the organisation. It becomes diluted by the time it reaches you and your team's daily work. In fact, only 28 per cent of managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company's strategic priorities according to a 2018 MIT Sloane Management Review study. The 2024 B‐Suite Benchmarks prove that thinking strategically is one of the three weakest competencies in middle managers.

So, to become a B‐Suite Leader, you must have a system to build your own strategy and to address that gap — so that you, and your people, are operating strategically more often. This is the art of constantly adjusting what needs to be done so you have the right people working on the right thing at the right time, all the time. Remember — without your own priorities, you're at the mercy of others’.

For high‐performing and transformative leaders, the act of strategising is so ingrained ...