Role of Leadership in Strategy Implementation

The definition of strategic leadership denotes “the leader’s ability to anticipate, envision, and maintain flexibility and to empower others to create strategic change as necessary” (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson 2008: 375). Strategic leadership has many facets, and it encompasses managing via others, and works as a helper for organizations to adjust with the changing world that appears as happening substantially as ever with the pace of time in today’s global business matrix. Strategic leadership demands the capability to incorporate and include both of the business environment of the organizations, which are internal and external. It is also responsible for managing and encompassing critical information processes. Given below in the diagram are some of the recognizable actions which determine strategic leadership that can progress positively towards effective strategy enactment:

· Determining strategic direction

· Establishing balanced organizational controls

· Effectively managing the organization’s resource portfolio

· Sustaining an effective organizational culture

· Emphasizing ethical practices organizational controls

Leadership is a set of behavior that enforces the people to formulate the organizational goals and then motivate them to jointly contribute in order to achieve organization’s goals. Basically leader plays a vital role in the decision making to ensure efficacy (effectiveness) and success of the organization. A leader should be supportive in order to guide subordinates. He should treat everyone equally without any discrimination. He should appreciate every one’s involvement. It is the responsibility of the leader to build strong relationships within the whole organization in both vertically and horizontally. Leader should involve everyone in the strategic management process because it is positively relating with overall performance. It is the commitment of the leader that helps to achieve the strategic vision. Most importantly leader’s objectives should be integrating with the organizations strategic goals and objectives to be champion. And for this leader’s power should be use accurately with honesty and loyalty. Leader should have a clear mental approach about the need of change and organization’s capabilities. (Sami, Qamar & Khalid, 2011).

Organization’s performance depends upon the strategies that use to achieve company’s vision. Leadership assimilates the strategy with vision to enrich the capability of the firm to perform well or according to the need. Today’s business environment is rapidly changing and mostly leaders try to adopt flexible and process improvement strategies to ensure responsiveness of the organization towards change. Leadership influenced the whole decision making process and decision making is the core of the strategic management process. It facilitates the whole process starting from conceptual framework for strategy formulation and till the evaluation. Especially strategy implementation is fully depending upon efficient decision making. Basically leadership influences three areas of organization first, the vision, Secondly the strategies itself and finally the values. These three components jointly create the culture of the organization. It is the responsibility of the leader to introduce a clear understanding of the vision throughout the organization. Everyone should know where we want to be in future.

Leadership is responsible for development of strategies to achieve the vision. Basically strategy formulation means is to provide road map and this road map should be clear and focused. It is the duty of leadership to relate the strategy process with the vision. It should develop a culture of learning by providing a clear set of values for the organization. Values demonstrate the behavior of the organization and lead the organization towards right. Both vision and strategies should reflect these values. Once the leader understands the importance of values the process of strategy formulation and implementation becomes easy. The most important role of the leadership is to integrate the people with the strategic management process. It should involve everyone to ensure responsiveness towards change. (Jonminerich, 2008).

Source: Jabbar et. al., The Role Of Leadership In Strategic Management , International journal of Research Granthalaya, a knowledge repository;  Vol.5 (Iss.5): May, 2017; ISSN- 2350-0530(O), ISSN- 2394-3629(P) ICV (Index Copernicus Value) 2015: 71.21 IF: 4.321 (CosmosImpactFactor), 2.532 (I2OR) InfoBase Index IBI Factor 3.86

The employment of successful strategies defines your business and displays your abilities as a leader. Strategic implementation of your company's best concepts requires a dedicated manager familiar with the systems and processes involved. It also depends on the ability of a supervisor to successfully motivate her team of workers.

Implementing corporate strategy requires a team effort headed by your organization's leadership team. Each person involved in change management has their responsibilities, and it is important for the entire organization to understand the role of leadership in strategic implementation to make delegating responsibility more effective.

Communicating Plans

 

Strategic implementation begins with setting goals and communicating these to workers. Prioritize your objectives, put resources at employees' disposal, explain the processes and, above all, transmit your vision to your team. Communicating well means your listeners comprehend your words and are able to put them into action. For example, when describing how to implement a new software program, use layman's terms when talking to those who are not computer specialists. Give the information in small, digestible chunks and test understanding before moving on. Define & inform Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to all concerned. Key performance indicators are one of the oldest management tools around - because they work. They keep you honest about your progress and focused on your outcomes. For eg: No. of eye balls/hits received on your website or footfalls in your brick & mortar store is an indication whether you are visible enough among public; But how much of it got converted to actual sale is indicative of the product’s success in the market.

 

Involvement

Strategic implementation of any kind of new company policy or program requires participation from all of the departments that will be affected. Company leadership needs to identify what those departments are and create an implementation team that consists of representatives from each affected group. Management needs to create a structure that identifies various group leaders, the responsibilities of those group leaders and an accountability system that insures that the implementation team meets its timetable for getting the new program or policy in place.

Interest

Implementing change or any new strategy within a company requires a feeling of urgency on the part of the entire company. It is the job of management to create that urgency by explaining to the staff why the implementation is necessary. Leadership needs to help the employees understand how the company benefits from the new implementation, but it also needs to get the organization to see the setbacks of not making a change.

Encouraging Staff

Your attitude will prove contagious for the staff. If you are energetic and willing to give your best to the company, others will follow suit. When encouraging your staff you need to be a consistent role model who stays on tasks, works to solve problems and keeps to a schedule. You want your employees to emulate your behavior without having to lecture them on what how to act and perform in the workplace. For example, if you are always on time and get to work quickly on the implementation process, your staff will understand the need to do so as well. Create a culture of encouragement by praising hard work, passionate exhibitions and creativity in individual efforts. Your staff will appreciate the recognition.

 

Monitoring

Strategic implementation within a company is not an exact process. It is a dynamic procedure that needs to be monitored by management and altered to meet implementation goals. It is the responsibility of leadership to put a monitoring system in place, analyze the data that is being generated during the implementation and make any necessary changes to make the implementation more efficient.

Next Step

Implementing a corporate strategy or change is often done in phases. The company leadership needs to be able to identify when each phase of a strategic implementation is complete and be ready to transition the company to the next phase. For example, if the company is bringing in a new software program for customer management, then the first phase of the program may be to implement it in the sales department. Management needs to identify when the proper alterations to the software have been made that will allow it to be implemented in other parts of the company.

 

As situation are dynamic as the leader’s role. Basically leaders provide the vision and set the goals for long run and short run. After determining the vision their intentions shift towards development of plans or towards strategy formulation after that they try to involve every one for building a team to execute the plans. Leaders should ensure their own commitment as well as their subordinates. Then they provide resources and motivate their team to implement strategy. Finally, they evaluate the whole process to find the gaps for improvement.

The transition from the operational level to the strategic level is an important process that every leader needs to overcome. It involves many challenges. Many leaders face difficulty to pass this step and they fail to overcome it. Due to the rapid changes in the business environment and the growing competition and changing attitudes of employees from one generation to other generation, it is necessary for organizations to develop strategic leaders who are able to formulate and implement strategies which deliver the desired results to achieve sustainability.  In contrast to operational leadership, whose role is limited to managing only the day-to-day operations, leaders who transform from operational leadership to strategic leadership need to play different types of roles to achieve long-term strategic results. This will help their organizations to grow and gain competitive advantage. It will also help them to implement the change management process easily and quickly. The importance of each role depends on the status of the business that the leader is associated with. The strategic leader generally plays nine roles in the organization while displaying his leadership style.

First of all, leaders try to identify the key problem situations as soon as possible and work as direction-finder. Secondly, they work as a strategist in whom it is the duty of leader to analyze the situation and formulate the strategy, which is suitable for the goals. Thirdly leader is an entrepreneur, fourthly leader serve as mobilize in the organization. It develops and provides resources for proper execution of strategies. At fifth stage it works as talent promoter and find out or develops the team of key players required for change implementation. Then it serves the organization as captivator and develops a long term commitment of every one towards goals. At seventh stage leaders perform the role of a global thinker and make sure organization’s alignment with international and national perspective. Then it performs the duty of a change driver. It creates the environment that is appropriate for change. And finally leader works as organizations custodian and safe guards the stakes of all stake holders. Leader works as a resource investigator and disturbance handler. Whole organizations performance depends upon leadership (Loren and Matthew, 2008).

These nine roles of the top strategic leadership are:  

1.Navigator— In this role, the leader works quickly and clearly to deal with difficulties, solves problems and takes advantage of various opportunities to influence existing work and people. The Navigator role of the leader makes the leader to analyze a large amount of conflicting information, understand the root cause of the problems and identify the feasible and optimal solutions.

 2. Strategist— The strategist role of the leader enables the leader to develop a long-term strategy and set targets to match the vision of an organization. The strategy is focused on creation of future plans and required actions immediately. The strategist role enables the leader to provide a direction to the organization to achieve the desired vision. 

3. Entrepreneur­— In this role, the leader acts an entrepreneur. He/she identifies and takes advantage of opportunities and expands business by creating innovative products, services or markets. Thinking like an entrepreneur and owner of the organization, the leader generates new ideas, takes advantage of opportunities or proposals and transforms them into a new path. The leader develops the ability to solve problems easily through his acumen and shrewdness and creates a new style of leadership.

 4. Mobilizer— Playing the role of mobilizer, the strategic leader mobilizes all kinds of resources and develops teams and partners to work with them by leveraging the synergy of wide variety of talent. Also, he / she builds a capacity that allows rapid implementation of work in order to achieve complex objectives.

 5. Talent advocate - In this role, the strategic leader identifies talented and skillful employees, internally and externally and stays in touch with them to tap their talent as and when required. He / she creates a culture of talent development by encouraging innovative ideas, by providing training, by empowering the talented employees to reach their highest possible abilities.

 6. Captivator— Playing the role of a captivator, the strategic leader continues to build confidence among employees, and creates positive feelings and a culture of belongingness. In this role, the leader converts the talent of employees into a useful outcome for the organization. Also, he convinces employees to accept his leadership style, synchronizes it with the vision of the organization and empowers them achieve the vision.

7. Global thinker— The other important role played by the strategic leader is as a global thinker. The leader understands and respects all types of diversity in the organization and designs the strategies and action keeping the diversity factor in mind. He thinks from a very high macro level perspective and keeps identifying global opportunities.

8. Change driver— Organizations need to adapt to the dynamic business environment by making changes on a continuous basis. The strategic leader plays an important role as a change driver. The leader creates and develops change management strategies and evolves techniques to make the employees accept the changes from time to time. The leader convinces the employees by projecting the fruitful outcomes of the changes.

9. Enterprise guardian - In this role, the strategic leader acts as an enterprise guardian. He / She keeps a constant check on the status of the organization by keenly observing the business environment and guards the enterprise from any disturbances. The leader refuses to negotiate over long-term gains. He / She takes bold and wise decisions with courage and risk taking attitude for a long-term benefit to the organization. The leader takes the onus of failure and shares the success with all the employees. Keeps away from emotions and personal relationships when it comes to the achievement of results. He / She becomes popular in the organization and outside by taking bold, useful but unpopular decisions.  It is essential to develop the leaders with the above abilities in every organization.

How Leadership Works in Strategy Management

Leadership has a significant role play in the formation and carrying out of strategies. It is termed as a linkage which connects the strategic management process with the aim and vision of the organization. It begins the strategic thought by offering vision. After that, it works as a foundation to cushion culture where everybody realizes what are the ways to do, and what are the prevalent values regarding the firm. Fundamentally, values offer the direction (Mosia & Veldsman, 2004). The responsibility lies on the leadership to familiarize the values or a culture pertinent to corporate. The vision of the leader itself proffers base line strategy formation and the pledge of the leadership makes sure the enactment of strategy (Fairholm, 2004).Formulated strategies can’t be implemented without the involvement of every one. Everyone should understand the need of change and should contribute their effort to efficiently implement the strategies. And only leadership can inspire and motivate the people to bring change because people always resist change. Leadership works to find out the gaps by carefully scan the environment both internal and external. And develop plans to fill these gaps by implementation of plans (Ascot, 2008).