Communication Is The Key To Strategic Leadership
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Word Count: about 750, approximate reading time 3 to 4 minutes. Please share your thoughts in the comments. Please be kind and subscribe to my newsletter.
Communication is essential to effective strategic leadership. In last week’s newsletter, I share a perspective on what makes strategic leadership so challenging. Fundamentally changing an organization’s primary objective or the core operating models used to achieve those objectives requires exceptional storytelling.
Some individuals have obvious positions of authority to call for a strategic transformation. A CEO is expected to identify the need and develop transformational plans. Even with positional authority, a CEO has to craft and tell an effective story. All of the key stakeholders need to be engaged and fully supportive for the initiative to be successful. The CEO must have the full support of the rest of the c-suite. The Board of Directors must support the initiative. Once the direction is set the story must be told to employees, customers, partners, and financial backers. If any of these groups oppose or passively resist, the chance for failure increases.
To bring everyone together, the story must be told with empathy. The story is not about what you want to say. It is about knowing what the audience wants to hear. The story is the story and it must stand on its own. The story is rearranged and repackaged to make it fit the audience.
Jeremy Connell-Waite shares his thoughts on effective storytelling for business on LinkedIn. Recently he posted a video that explored why Jane Goodall is such an effective speaker. He demonstrates how Ms. Goodall tells the same story in different ways based on the audience she is addressing and what her objectives are for making a presentation.
Great storytelling in business requires a leader to help everyone to understand the challenges and the need for change in the same way. With understanding, you can get people to care about the outcome. When people are committed to the objective they help to make the transformation a reality. The transformation journey is a process. There will be false starts and course corrections as more is learned and obstacles are overcome. The journey is also one of compromise. The vision will not be any one person’s alone. It will be a compilation of ideas
PWC 2022 Global Risk Survey
This is one of the annual surveys I look forward to reading each year. In the current survey, one finding surprised me. Geopolitical risk is the highest concern in Europe and one of the lowest concerns everywhere else. The global economy is interconnected and what happens in one part of the world impacts everyone. Given how the recent invasion of Ukraine has affected the global economy (oil & gas, wheat, etc.), I would have expected leaders to be more sensitive to geopolitical instability anywhere in the world.
In the 2010s, I worked with a Fortune 25 company to develop a global IT service delivery model. The CIO was attuned to geopolitical risk. Global delivery was designed to operate out of three regions (EMEA, APAC, and the Americas). There were thresholds that limited the amount of work that could be delivered from any region. Within each region, there were limits on how much work could be delivered from any one country. The objective was not to achieve the lowest cost. The goal was to build a support organization that was cost-effective and protected service delivery in event of political instability and natural disasters. Some of the 2010s events that caused the client to take this approach were: the Arab Spring, Brexit, Russia’s invasion of Crimea, and natural disasters (tsunamis, hurricanes, wildfires, etc.).
What I'm Up To
Each month, our neighborhood has a golf outing. We rotate the planning each month. A friend of mine and I are arranging for June. We decided to try and turn the event into a modest fundraiser for Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD) and The Walk to End Alzheimer’s. My friend’s children suffer from FSHD. Both of my in-laws are in memory care facilities with Alzheimer’s. I encourage everyone to learn more and get involved. If not one of these causes, find a cause that is personal to you and work to make a difference.
Quote of the Week
“A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.”
– Ludwig Erhard
The Leader With A Thousand Faces is available on Amazon.
My goal is to make this newsletter as interesting and valuable as possible. Please share your thoughts and suggestions for improvement. If there are specific topics in leadership you would like me to focus on in future issues, please send them my way.
This newsletter also appears on LinkedIn and Medium. Medium is a great source for interesting articles on almost any subject. I encourage you to check it out.
