Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership pertains to executives’ use of power and influence to direct the
activities of others when pursuing an organization’s goals. Power is defined as the strategic
leader’s ability to influence the behavior of other organizational members to do things, including
things they would not do otherwise.

According to the Level-5 leadership pyramid, effective strategic leaders go through a

natural progression of five levels. Each level builds upon the previous one; the individual can
move on to the next level of leadership only when the current level has been mastered. At Level
1, we find the highly capable individual who makes productive contributions through her
motivation, talent, knowledge, and skills. These traits are a necessary but not sufficient condition
to move on to Level 2, where the individual attains the next level of strategic leadership by
becoming an effective team player. In Level 3, the team player with a high individual skill set
turns into an effective manager who is able to organize the resources necessary to accomplish the
organization’s goals. In Level 4, the effective professional has learned to do the right things,
meaning she does not only command a high individual skill set and is an effective team player
and manager, but she also knows what actions are the right ones in any given situation to pursue
an organization’s strategy. Combining all four prior levels, at Level 5, the strategic leader builds
enduring greatness by combining willpower and humility.

Vision, Mission Value

 Vision. What do we want to accomplish ultimately?
The visions are customer-oriented; Internal stakeholders are invested in defining the vision;
Organizational structures such as compensation systems align with the firm’s vision statement.

 Mission. How do we accomplish our goals?

A mission describes what an organization does and how it proposes to
accomplish its vision. The mission is often introduced with the preposition

 Values. What commitments do we make, and what safe guards do we put in place, to act
both legally and ethically as we pursue our vision and mission?
Statement of principles to guide an organization as it works to achieve its vision and fulfill its
mission, for both internal conduct and external interactions; it often includes explicit ethical
considerations

The Strategic Management Process

 Top-down strategic planning more often rests on the assumption that we can predict the
future from the past. The approach works reasonably well when the environment does not
change much
 To model the scenario-planning approach, place the elements in the Analysis,
Formulation, Implementation (AFI) strategy framework in a continuous feedback loop,
where analysis leads to formulation to implementation and back to analysis