If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’ve found yourself in a position where you’re expected to be involved in strategy either for the entire organisation or the department where your responsibility lies – and you feel a little out of your depth.
I’d like to reassure you that you are not alone.
Many people face the same struggle. One of the reasons for this is the mistaken idea that creating strategy is something only top level managers do once a year in the company off-site.
I’ve worked with 1000s of leaders who have struggled to create strategy.
It’s not because they weren’t experts in their field – they had years of subject knowledge experience behind them. And it’s also not because strategy is vastly complicated (it isn’t). The mistake, and the reason so many leaders struggle, is they have not had any education in strategy – it’s never been part of their ‘job’.
The result? Believing that strategy is a mysterious process that is the domain of senior management only. Everyone else in the organization doesn’t need to be involved.
This mistaken belief leads to a number negative consequences:
- Lack of strategic clarity: Leaders who see strategy as a secretive process or something that is handed down from above often feel detached from strategy. As a result, they fail to own and communicate it effectively to their own teams. This lack of communication and involvement creates operational chaos because without clarity, teams prioritize the wrong tasks or duplicate efforts, leading to inefficiency and frustration.
- Over-reliance on consultants: Viewing strategy as complicated and reserved for a select few can make leaders believe external experts are the solution. While consultants provide valuable insights, leaders need to always remain in the driver seat, and not let consultants determine their strategy. This requires a solid understanding about strategy so leaders don’t confuse the 100s of presentation slides from consultants as “a strategy”.
- Failure to align strategy with culture and leadership: Treating strategy as a black-box process prevents it from aligning with the remaining two components of your organization’s identity: leadership and culture. Without this alignment, strategy often feels disconnected, fragmented, or arbitrary, leaving people wondering how they are supposed to make the strategy work when it just doesn’t fit.
The reason for this is not bad leaders, it’s a lack of training around strategy.
A skill, rather than a job.
Leaders rise through the ranks on the basis of their subject matter expertise – finance, technology, marketing, whatever their specialized area is. Strategy is not a requirement to do these jobs and so there is little if any training in it as people work their way up an organization.
The result? Leaders now can’t do their work properly because they haven’t been given the right resources.
So what can be done to avoid these mistakes?
It all comes down to a shift in mindset. Because the easy answer would be to simply say ‘include strategy in all employee training’. However, unless there is a fundamental shift in the way strategy is perceived, this advice would be useless.
So let’s set the foundation first.
- Strategy is your responsibility. Whether you’re an executive writing the overarching company strategy or a middle manager creating your department strategy, you should be involved in making the choices guided by the vision and communicating them. As a leader, your role is guiding your team with intentional decisions that align with larger goals. By embracing this responsibility, you drive better outcomes and inspire confidence and trust in those you lead.
- Strategy doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is deeply connected to other critical components of your organization, such as culture and leadership. A clear strategy drives culture to shape behaviors, and leadership drives alignment and vision to define success. Strategy mustn’t be seen as an isolated exercise – it integrates many elements to create a cohesive framework that drives decisions and actions across the organization. Without integration, each element is weakened, but together, they create clarity, action, and results.
- Strategy can be learned: It’s not something inherent in you as soon as you become a leader – if it were, you wouldn’t be reading this! Strategy is a skill – like budgeting or project management – that anyone can develop. Even seasoned strategic leaders were once beginners. The key is to approach it with curiosity and not feel you have to wait to be ‘trained’. You can create your own opportunities to learn and refine your strategic thinking, moving you closer to mastering this essential leadership skill.
What you can do right away
Step 1:
What strategy (if any) currently exists for your organization or department? Identify one or more areas where you feel strategy is missing or unclear. Locate any existing documents, statements, or plans labeled as “strategy” or “strategic” – and read them.
If you feel anything is unclear, chances are you are not the only. Start a dialogue with your team, your boss, or anyone in charge of strategy. You will immediately better understand, and as a result be able to better lead your team in making the right choices.
Step 2:
Join 9EOI strategy certification for leaders – the program build strategy skills from a practical perspective, so that you can take action and create strategy right away.
Main Image by Vitor Freitas.