Are you a strategic leader?

Colleagues,

I’ve been using a lot of analogies lately, but today I just want to ask you to stop and reflect on your leadership in terms of being strategic. As you read the rest of this email, and for three minutes afterwards, just assess how well you are doing in each area.
 
The four pillars of strategic leadership are:

1. Purpose: focusing on what is important instead of what is urgent. Important tasks move the organization closer to achieving the organization’s purpose.
2. Problems: identifying and investing in solving root problems instead of spending time treating symptoms.
3. Progress: implementing constant incremental change through strategic action cycles. Making things incrementally better each day is better than investing in big changes that take months to produce results.
4. People: actively coaching and promoting the growth of people in the organization is the fastest way to real and lasting improvement. I heard one guru suggest that 90% of a leader’s time should be spent developing people. That is a lot, but really reflect on this: if all of your people were 20% better, what tasks would you no longer have to do, or would spend less time on?

Please do reflect on these things and consider sharing your “ahas” with me.

Do good and be well,

​Frederick