20 May Monuments and Mobiles (part two)
On 22nd May our monthly OD café will explore the reality of “doing” strategy in massive “monumental” organisations on the one hand, and smaller “mobile” organisations on the other. If you would like to join the conversation, click here to register. This is a step on our journey toward revising our offerings in strategy development, as we try to rethink our service portfolio.
The conversation will explore the various levels of leadership in the context of the number of strategic layers in an organisation. As a teaser – and to prepare you to participate if you would care to join – here are some thoughts.
Current leadership development programs treat leadership in a kind of “one size fits all” way. If you open the leadership development programs from 10 different providers you find much the same ingredients – flavoured to the individual delegates, but nevertheless much the same. This is the outcome of the project to democratise leadership that started in the 1980’s – to have leaders at all levels of the organisation. It is working well, and good practice is spreading.
Strategy and leadership are deeply connected. Every leadership program starts with “set direction” in some form or another. Setting direction could be considered another way of saying “Strategy”. If leadership is expected at all organisational levels, so is strategy in some form or another.
Grand strategy could be thought of as bold, transformational moves into new markets or new products. Nimble strategy could be thought of as nudges and opportunistic shifts when a gap opens.
Many strategy programs teach “grand strategy.” Few organisational leaders get the opportunity to execute grand strategy. The reason may be connected to the strategic complexity of the organisational setting.
If leadership is “at all levels” then where are most leaders? They are NOT at the pinnacle of the massive “monumental” organisations. Relative to all leaders, very few are at the helm of the monuments. Most are inside the belly of the monument, and we will explore how their strategic options are limited by the internal and external forces that are natural and ever present in those monuments.
In smaller, mobile organisations, leadership may also be distributed throughout the organisation – and (unlike the monument) faces fewer internal structural entanglements. Could it be that there are more candidates for grand strategy in smaller organisations, and that (by a large factor) most leaders in monumental organisations need a different kind of strategy?
Join us as we try to figure this out – click here to register. We would love to see you. If you would like to discuss your own strategy development programs with us, please reach out here and we will come and drink some coffee with you.