In today’s global business climate, internal decisions are often driven by unanticipated external changes. It’s significant to note that organizations are responding to this ever-evolving climate in part by changing their own practices to become more agile and adaptable. But maintaining efficient operations amidst constant change requires constant strategic planning, and constant strategic planning requires effective strategic leadership.
Strategic leaders help organizations stay on track to achieve long-term objectives, while simultaneously navigating the daily challenges that could influence the company’s success. While the need for effective strategic leadership has never been greater, it can be difficult to find. In searching for effective leadership, it’s important to look for these four key characteristics:
1. Strategic Leadership includes the ability to balance vision and execution
Effective strategic leaders possess a strong ability to conceptualize far-reaching objectives, while still being able to take the necessary actions to execute both long and short-term goals. Strategic leaders must be able to turn their visions into actions, even when they aren’t on the ground floor making those visions a reality. As highly-focused visionaries, they maintain a clear perspective of what tomorrow might bring, and are able to effectively communicate their visions in order to encourage action.
2. Strategic leaders are insatiable learners
Effective strategic leaders exhibit a strong sense of curiosity, an insatiable thirst to learn more about their industry, their competitive landscape, and their own business operations. This curiosity enhances their ability to anticipate trends, shifts, and disruptions because they’re so plugged into the subtle shifts in the market. This is extremely helpful during the vision development and planning processes.
Their curiosity functions as an intuition of sorts and help them proactively anticipate possible challenges. This means effective strategic leaders constantly ask questions and try to understand the ‘why’ behind any changes that occur—whether that be internal or external. Shifts and trends tend to unfold over time, so those who are constantly learning about their environment, competitors, and potential challenges can be proactive in handling the changes.
3. Strategic Learners embrace a collaborative mindset
While confident in their own knowledge, effective strategic leaders also realize the value that their coworkers’ or team’s new ideas can bring. They take care to integrate those new ideas into their vision for the business.
By incorporating multiple perspectives in unique ways, strategic leaders help foster a business culture that values the free flow of information and, in turn, is better able to adapt to change.
4. Strategic Leadership is transparent and data-driven
With the increasing amount of accessible data, the key is finding the best ways to use that data. Effective strategic leadership involves understanding the value of using data during the decision-making process and while developing both organizational and departmental strategies.
Strategic leaders use data to support their decisions while maintaining a company culture that values transparency and data-driven objectives. In an organization with a data-driven culture, transparency ensures the ongoing realization of new sources of business value. Strategic leaders are also consistently working to find new ways to use data to maintain a competitive market position.
Having strategic leaders within your organization is paramount to succeeding in today’s business world. Without individuals to inspire action, anticipate challenges, seek organizational feedback, and evaluate data, organizations are driving blind, just hoping they’re headed in the right direction.
About AchieveIt
AchieveIt is the platform that large organizations use to get their biggest, most important initiatives out of the boardroom and into reality. Too many great ideas never quite make it across the finish line, because there’s no real way to keep everyone on course and keep everything on track. What does it take to actually guide these initiatives all the way through to completion? You’ve got to:
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- Get everything in view – so you can see what’s happening with every initiative, at every level, from the enterprise to the individual, in real time.
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- Get everyone engaged – with an easy-to-use platform that connects your organization from the executive leadership to the project teams, keeping everyone accountable and on the same page.
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- Get every possible advantage – not only because you have the premier platform in this space, but because you can draw on the experience and best practices of our execution experts.
That’s why everyone from global corporations, to regional healthcare systems, to federal agencies have turned to AchieveIt for their Integrated Plan Management. Let’s actually do this.
