Both the doers and strategists are equally important in the business lifecycle. It would not be incorrect to say that the number of doers outnumbers the visionaries or strategists in the corporate world.
However, we tend to gravitate towards being a doer and miss the chance of moving up in the corporate roles.
Let us look at some of the behaviours, which may be hindering your progress to become a strategic leader.
* The strategy is an emerging field with many thought leaders and models of implementations; there are few commonly used terms that describe strategic thinking. And in case you are not using these terms, the other party may not be able to see your strategic bent.
If you want to be perceived as being strategic, you have to talk more strategically and use the lingo. To brush up on the language, read through the works of famous strategic leadership gurus like CK Prahalad, Michael Porter, Gary Hamel, Ram Charan amongst many others.
While it is true that most don’t flow the way they are supposed to, it does not mean it is a wasted effort.
By making a strategic plan, organisations can make intelligent choices around deployment of resources and priorities.
Most of the corporate failures have been attributed to lack of strategic intent and not tactical failure; the last one to go under because of this folly was Nokia.
* Most of the corporate denizens are so absorbed in the daily chores that they stop being curious about what’s going to happen in the next five years. They believe that if they continued doing what they are doing today, life would be great and would sail through; nothing could be farther from truth and reality.
To be a visionary and be seen as a strategist you require a healthy dose of curiosity and imagination.
* Getting to a strategic plan is laced with complicated steps; good strategists tend to make things very complex at the first stage.
They did into heaps of data, market trends, consumer behavior studies, client feedback, and competitor intelligence. They end up making maze before it is narrowed down to five statements or less.
Corporate citizens, who love simplicity, tend to display impatience and want to get over with the task as soon as possible, these people are result oriented and want to get to those five magical statements without going through the toil of digging deep enough into the market indicators.
Courtesy: www.humanresourcesblog.in
