INTRODUCING....
This is a fantastic time to want to improve your skills as a strategic leader: there has never been more information to choose from than there is today.
This also is a really tough time to want to improve your skills as a strategic leader: there has never been more information to choose from than there is today.
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This is why we have created this site. There is a tool, a technique or a piece of advice available to solve almost any leadership issue. The challenge is that each useful piece of information is camouflaged with either buzzwords and hyperbole or myth and legend about leadership heroes. This makes it difficult to pick out truly useful tools from the empty stories and pointless exercises.
Here at STR Strategy, we are bringing together the most useful strategic management tools.
We believe the fundamental basis of strategic leadership is the ability to identify a goal, determine the current position and then derive a path between the two. There are other important factors such as negotiation skills or the ability to present an idea which we will also touch on but the focus here is to build and execute a strategy.
The site is broken into key areas to describe this. Each area presents a number of interlocking tools that provide a solid basis to build a strategy on.
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So far, so good - sounds like thousands of other management books, consultants or podcasts. After all, what could be better than a single series of instructions that will solve any strategic issue?
There is a book by Jeffrey Pfeffer called Leadership BS that helps explain why this is a risky way to look at any of the output of the management industry (we’ll discuss this a little later but Pfeffer has summarized key elements of it here). We don’t fully share the full magnitude of his mistrust of the management industry; neither do we pretend that all the answers can be neatly packaged up in whichever catchphrase is currently in vogue. We do believe that there is a kernel of truth in many of the tools and that what works in one application may not be as effective in another.
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So the message is to not take any management tool to be the last you will ever need, nor should you take any website to be the absolute source of truth.
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Even this one.
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This is why we invite your comments. Our experience tells us these are the tools that will work, you may have better. You may have tried these tools and they didn’t work or they needed some adjustment. You might find that these worked like a magic trick and we’re all visionaries here. Whatever your views are, we believe that the total of all of our experiences is greater than any small group. We will either leave the useful comments on the site for everyone to see or we will write them into future revisions of the guidance here.
Above all, keep learning. Read what you can and try what you can; learn from what works and from what doesn’t. Question everything – understand what works and why, and definitely don’t assume that it will work because someone who seems credible is selling you a promise
A WORD OF WARNING....
Before we start, we should go back to Pfeffer’s ‘Leadership BS’. While this book presents a view of the leadership industry that is a little too damning, there are some very incisive truths to consider.
How ‘expert’ is the expert that you have engaged with either as a consultant, an author or the creator of a website. Even if they have good credentials in one industry or company, does this mean that their guidance is truly applicable in your situation: there are many subtle contextual considerations that can derail something that has worked in other places.
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Are the measures of your chosen source of guidance really metrics of technical competence? Quite often we look to bestseller lists, website popularity or YouTube views. Do these measure how insightful the lesson is or how entertaining the presentation is? Of course, there may be elements of both. Having a brightly colored book cover, catchy title and five star reviews can apply to the good and the bad alike.
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Look for the truth behind the mythology. The leadership industry loves its heroes and villains, but being excellent at one element shouldn’t imply excellence at all. Steve Jobs may have been a fantastic speaker and an incisive strategist but potentially not the most nurturing of leaders. How much of the success of these leaders is being in the right place at the right time? Would Jobs’ approach have given him the same success in your team or organisation at your level?
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The same consideration applies to the villains of the show. Many of those held up as having made terrible decisions are being scrutinized with the benefit of hindsight. You should consider how they got to their positions of power – were they just fortunate idiots that finally stumbled to the end of their luck? Did they not apply any level of reflection on their decisions?. Did they not seek the guidance available from the most rudimentary of internet searches or highly paid consultants? Were these villains working unilaterally or were they surrounded by highly experienced and trained senior leaders whose advice supported the bad decision? Many have degrees from the same business schools that now hold their decisions up for scrutiny without reviewing the mechanism that led to the failures.
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Is it all a waste of time? Definitely not. Much of the information out there is built around a good solid piece of advice. Successful leaders are not simply in the right place at the right time - they must have the right skills to make the most of the situations they find themselves in.
Your first challenge is to pick through the fables and preached sermons to get to the core. The second is to review whether that advice applies in your context, at all times being sure to not confuse the real world with the fairy tale land in which all management tools will work.
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Are we now going to tell you that this site is the exception, the single source of truth? Not at all.
We believe we are presenting a really solid approach to building a strategy. It has worked across a number of industries and situations. We will not tell you that it is guaranteed to work for you; we have used the tools successfully a number of times and scaled to many different challenges. This does not mean you can copy-paste them into your business.
Take the tools, look at them, hold them up and understand what would work and what wouldn’t. There is nothing here that is sacred. Modify them, discard them or use them as described. Read the comments to understand others’ experience.
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Most importantly, keep looking at what you're doing, keep refining your ideas and above all, keep learning!
