PREFACE:
Do we really know what someone means when they refer to strategies or tactics? Through my years as a leader, I have found these two concepts to be frequently confused and too often considered to be interchangeable. But there is definitely a difference between the two and acquiring the knowledge and understanding of how they differ is a critical competency for any leader.
Strategies are plans of action designed to achieve a desired outcome. Tactics are the specific maneuvers and procedures employed to move an organization forwards with respect to those strategies. Within an organization we will usually find people who are very adept at developing strategies and we find people who are very competent developers of tactics. And there are people who are fantastic at executing tactics. Sometimes people are very capable of doing all three but not always. Some people who are excellent strategists have a great deal of difficulty devising the tactics needed to execute those strategies. Similarly, there are people who once given the strategy can create the operational tactics needed to succeed but they have tremendous difficulty formulating effective strategies. And then it is not unusual to find that great strategists and great tacticians find it difficult to actually execute but there are individuals who are extraordinarily adept at taking the strategies and tactics and making them operational. For an organization to succeed it must have all three.
From a different point of view, we can consider the strategy to be a big picture aspect of organizational activity and the tactics are the details. Some people see the big picture with great clarity but have very little connection to the details needed to realize the big picture. Other people can see the details but have difficulty taking the steps back from the canvas so as to reveal the bigger picture. Possibly nowhere in all of the machinations of an organization does the need for shared leadership become more obvious than at this point. If a leader adheres to a strict “I’m the Boss” mentality, that leader runs the serious risk of alienating people who have the competencies needed to achieve the organizational mission.
Shared leadership is messy. This is the main reason, I believe, why so few leaders use the approach. However, once shared leadership is fully deployed it rarely fails. And in the situations where leaders report failure of shared leadership, we can usually see that it was the leader’s inability to truly embrace shared leadership and all of its nuances that resulted in the failure. In fact, it was probably not a true implementation of shared leadership but only an “experiment” gone awry.
Because no single person can have competence in every area required in any organization, traditional top-down leadership systems have definite limitations to their potential for effectiveness. Using shared leadership is the only way to unlock the full potential of the organization. But it cannot be a patronizing, “shared leadership project.” The “projects” do not create the freedom of thought and action that true shared leadership systems create. The project approach creates a sense among organization members that “I’d better be careful because as soon as this project is over, I can be punished for anything I did that the boss doesn’t like.” To get the full, unbridled effort from everyone on the team requires a “leader” that is willing to share the decision-making function while retaining the ultimate responsibility for failure. It is that realization that chases too many leaders away from the most effective organizational system possible.
To maximize the possibility for success on any endeavor, every leader wants fully engaged, 100% committed workers. Workers become more engaged the more they believe their talents and skills will be put to good use. If they are only order takers, they will tend to engage in minimal compliance and the practice of “error avoidance.” Real quality is never achieved through minimal compliance and we never test our capacity to grow if we are afraid to make a mistake. Quality is not attained through the pursuit of perfection but rather through the pursuit of excellence and the ability to learn from every mistake. The more empowered workers are, the freer they will be in the process of “team-working” so that when a teammate sees a co-worker heading towards and error, the teammate can intercede before the errant action can be taken. In the deployment of tactics that are essential to the successful completion of a strategy the more attention each tactic receives from a variety of eyes, ears, noses fingers and minds, the greater the chances will be that critical mistakes will not be made while the fullest extent of actions are actually taken.
The Many Skills Needed by Leaders Part III:
Last week I wrote about planning and that led to a discussion of strategies and tactics. To better understand how strategies and tactics help us realize our vision, let’s look at an example. What strategies and tactics are used at XYZ Corp to help them realize their vision? Let’s start with their strategy. From the beginning they employed strategies based on one at a time. Each member of the team focuses on each client, one at a time. That doesn’t mean they have one and only one client. What it means is when working with a client, the client has their full attention. They give them what they need, when they need it.
They set limits on how many clients they will serve and when they approach their limit, they begin to entertain thoughts of adding to the team. This leads to part 2 of their strategy and that is managed, steady growth. They do not want to take on more than they can handle and they don’t want to add staff beyond their capacity to maintain quality. They’ve thought this through and they’ve been adhering to their strategic plan.
Tactically speaking, to deliver on that strategy they must have specific tactics that help them meet financial needs while maintaining carefully managed growth. One tactic is to add clients that require regular but controlled attention. These ongoing or continuing clients allow them to be completely focused on that client while working with them yet allows them the time needed to do sufficient prospecting so that they can keep a steady stream of new business coming in the door. Another tactic is to help their clients set up Talent Insight Centers within their companies. These Talent Insight Centers are virtual centers where data associated with the company’s key employees is stored and can be easily utilized to describe individuals, teams, or the entire company and how these people are most likely to behave under certain conditions.
For planning to be useful it is essential that we have carefully developed, challenging, yet realistic goals. Effective goal setting is critical to success. We talk about setting SMART goals. These are goals that are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Many people struggle with the development of SMART goals because they fail to be specific enough and they forget that the goal must be able to be measured. In writing this book my goal was: to write a book about leadership that was 100 to 150 pages long and tells leaders or potential leaders how to be more effective as leaders and to have this task completed by January 1, 2013. Specifically it is a book about leadership. Measurably it will be 100 to 150 pages long. Attainably, I have written 3 books before and I feel fully confident I can complete this task. Realistically I believe that having a book that helps demystify the leadership role will be a benefit to many, many leaders. Timely-wise, having the book completed by January 1, 2013 gives me just 4 months to complete the task so I am able to lay out a week-by-week schedule to keep for the project.
SUMMATION:
Strategies and tactics are the means by which the ultimate mission of any organization is achieved. The more targeted an organization is the greater are its chances for success. Being focused on an organization’s mission and having crystal clarity as to what that mission is and how the strategies and tactics will lead to the accomplishment of that mission provides an operational framework for any organization. The more complex an organization is the greater the necessity will be for creating real clarity of mission, strategies, and tactics. Any confusion that exists allows for deviation from the path that will lead to the desired outcomes. Leaders need to be laser focused and, at the same time, fully aware of their own limitaitons.
No leader has the capacity to know everything or the ability to do everything that must be done in a complex organization. To believe that you can control every aspect of an operation is truly quite an egotistical point-of-view. If your operation is so simple that you can do every job and think of every possibility then you actually have a fairly simple operation. As you add complexity the need for diversification becomes more and more critical. True diversification requires that people responsible for each aspect of the organization be addressed by real experts in that field.
There is a danger in this diversification. That danger is the creation of silos. Silos exist when individuals responsible for a specific function are allowed to feel as if they are independent from the rest of the organization. If each function acquires the same feeling then you create a completely siloed organization. To avoid the siloing of your organization you must teach interdependence as opposed to independence or non-dependence. Let’s look at two examples of siloing and corrective actions associated with these occurrences.
In the US Army there are a number of branches that each have specific responsibilities in any war effort. Most people are aware of the Infantry, the Artillery, the Airborne, and the likes but there are also Logistics, Quartermasters, Engineers, Aviation, Medical, and many others. Logistics is involved in getting the materials of war to where the infantry, artillery, and airborne troops need them. Quartermasters make sure those materials are purchased and accounted for. And each additional branch has its own part in any war effort. I’ve had the good fortune to have been very close to numerous military officers and non-commissioned officers. One of their biggest complaints is how “they” can get in the way of their particular unit’s accomplishment of a mission. This is a frustration in any organization. Silos, which were created to create efficiency actually end up hindering both efficiency and effectiveness.
Siloing doesn’t just happen in the military. I have some of my own experiences with siloing. 34 years in public education taught me that silos cost schools millions of dollars every year. In some schools the silos go room-by-room. In others it can go department-by-department. And almost every school district experiences at least siloing school-by-school. Siloing results in a failure to share resources, ideas, learnings, and experiences. The more siloed a school is the less sharing goes on. The less sharing that occurs the less learning between professionals happens. The less learning going on, well you can see where this is going. And besides the intellectual paralysis that siloing creates in our schools, siloing actually costs money. As silos are built up the people within those silos get very protective of what is “theirs!” And no matter how many times you tell an educator that nothing is theirs unless they buy it themselves with their own money, they still believe the classroom is theirs, the books are theirs the desks are theirs and all of the supplies in the room is theirs. And if a neighbor needs some of those materials, too bad.
So if the aim is to make sure that you are surrounded by people who have the real ability and freedom to do the parts of the job that you as the leader cannot do yourself and you want to do this without creating silos, what do you do? How do you create departments that don’t act like so many departments do; completely independent of every other part of the operation? You create departments that understand these basic principles:
- There is no “they” there is only “WE!”
- Internal customers are as important as external customers. If my internal customer cannot do his or her job because I have failed to honor my commitments to them our external customers will suffer and since there is no “they” any failure to meet the needs of our customers is a “WE” issue.
- Every commitment must be a 100% commitment and all commitments must be specific and need to be verbalized in an open setting. No weaseling allowed. If you cannot make a 100% commitments say so and explain why. Since it is only “WE” we all are in this together 100% or not at all.
- There is nothing I do in this organization that is without impact on at least one other person in the organization and more than likely, everything I do has some effect on everyone in the organization. The soon we all accept this the quicker we can get past any “Lone Wolf” endeavors by anyone, including the CEO!
Every organization is functional. No organization goes into its daily activities with the goal of “let’s see how much we can screw up today.” Functionality, like so much else that goes on this world, exists on a continuum from extraordinary functioning to minimally functioning. How well an organization functions is directly related to how well leadership relates the vision, mission, and purpose to everyone in the organization and then how well the vision, mission, and purpose is translated into specific strategies and tactics designed to achieve the mission. The degree to which siloing impacts an organizations ability to achieve desired outcomes will depend on how well leadership does in the process of sharing the leadership with those that must execute. Are you a helicopter boss? Do you micromanage? Or do your people really have the freedom to implement well designed strategies and tactics? Do they feel that they really make a difference or are they just order takers, waiting to see when the next shoe will fall?
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