Strategic Leadership definition

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Corporate strategy

Strategic Leadership definition

Strategic leadership involves all managerial efforts established to provide direction and vision for an organizations growth and success. Strategic leadership is a challenging task in which the values of strategic management can greatly determine the direction of an organization’s performance and direction on many aspects of its business, which can be perfected in corporate strategic management. Strategic leadership requires the execution and development of strategies that are strongly founded. Companies need to have strong strategic foundations if they are to develop and execute effective corporate strategies. In corporate management, strategies are formulated rigorously, after which evaluation of alternatives is done.

Strategic leadership and the various Styles

A careful follow up is done to bring about the required mobilization of the utmost strategy from a list of available strategies. Any aspect of success in corporate management is initiated from leadership styles and the way leaders in an organization act towards the achievement of various goals and objectives (Lamb, 98). The various styles that an organization can choose from are visionary, public relation, tactical, human resource, financial engineering, and analytical style. Working with clients is a tactical aspect of strategic leadership management in which full potential of the organization’s portfolio is established alongside the formulation of new portfolios if need be. Through strategic leadership, the mission, vision, and objectives of an organization can be established with ease by applying the visionary style. Using the visionary leadership style makes an organization work through establishment of great strategies that make it realize the goals and objectives set. In working towards its mission and under the guidance of its vision, an organization establishes projects alongside programs that put efforts to achieve the organizations goals and objectives.

In firms that employ much of tactic style of strategic leadership, the level of the firm’s managerial activities are usually below goal setting and above tactics. Tactic style is usually taken to be an ongoing process in the evaluation and control of business or industry in which an organization operates (Lamb, 108). The process has to incorporate continuous assessment of the organization’s competitors, the organization’s goals as well as strategies in which the combination are aimed at meeting all the potential and the existing competitors. The selected or formulated strategy has to be reassessed annually or in quarterly basis. The act of reassessing the strategies are meant to review their success and in case of a strategy failure, a replacement could be required as soon as possible (Lamb, 144). The use of a new strategy would be required to as a way of meeting changed strategies, any introduction of new technologies, new competitors in the market, changed environment, or a change of environment in terms of political, financial, or economic aspects. In corporate strategy and management, one has to identify the purpose of an organization as well as the plans or actions aimed at achieving the organization’s purpose.

Qualities of Effective Leadership

Ensuring effective leadership could be challenging but mangers have to take it simple. One has to understand the role of leaderships to be an effective leader. Effective leadership involves striving to make good choices to benefits other. Effective leadership has managers keeping on improving their skills. Besides this aspect, leaders should always focus on strengths especially in themselves as well as strength in others. Leaders who are effective usually lead by example in which case they maintain respect, act as role model, as well as being kind to others. Leaders in this case show integrity, act with clear vision, and have the ability of articulating their vision. Effective leadership helps in placing an organization in a better competitive position than its competitors place.

Challenges in Strategic Leadership

In managing strategic change, the process involves various concepts and processes in which a leader has to make use thus making the practice too challenging. Managing strategic change would require the leader to base his or strategic decisions on organization size, any proclivity to change of the organization’s business environment, which may be difficult to establish. If the size of the organizations and its business environment were unclear, it would be difficult to employ the right strategy or strategic model. In a transitional organization that operates, globally strategic leadership would be a difficult task (Chaffee, 85). Global challenges emanates from the demands that call for an organization to assume global leadership and operations. A structured strategic model of management would be applied due to an organization’s large size, great scope of operation, as well as the organization’s need to encompass the view of stakeholders and their requirements, which are factors adding weight to the challenges in strategic leadership. In the case of small or medium enterprises, strategies could be based on an entrepreneurial approach especially due to the organization’s size, which is relatively small. In this case, it would be difficult to recruit employees or retain them since employees usually look for greater organizations.

Given that a small or medium enterprise firm or organization changes in scope or size into a large organization whose operations are global, the management would employ decision-making processes that would ensure that the strategies employed comply with the scope of the business again promoting the difficulties in strategic leadership. In this case, the initially small firm would now tune from strategizing from the entrepreneurial perspective to an international perspective as far as corporate strategies are concerned, an aspect that may require the use of a more advanced leadership style. The firm would have to shift from using entrepreneurial approach to strategic management to the use of structured strategies.

How good leadership influences Strategic Direction and Performance

In effective leadership, strategic direction and performance can be achieved given that most to the efforts in forming new strategies are guide by organizational activities and good leadership traits, which call for managerial discussions. Whenever initiating a strategic direction and performance, effective leadership would ensure that, the correct steps are taken care of. In the classical school, strategy formation is considered to be based on three processes (Lamb, 198). Initially the management is required to run a compilation as well as dissemination of the organization’s mission and vision statement. The aspect of considering an organization’s mission and vision generates an outline of the organization from which leaders can obtain the right course for performing a strategic direction and performance for their organization (Lamb, 194). From the established mission and vision basis of the organization, the management would start by running a situation analysis in terms of evaluating the organization with respect to its competitors.

Works Cited

Chaffee, E. “Three models of strategy.” Academy of Management Review, vol 10, no. 1 ( 1985).

Charpentier, Will. Six Microenvironmental Factors That Affect Businesses. 2013. 26 March 2013 <http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/six-microenvironmental-factors-affect-businesses-16058.html>.

Lamb, Robert, Boyden. Competitive strategic management. Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, 1984.

Mason, Wendy H. MACROENVIRONMENTAL FORCES. 2013. 26 March 2013 <http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Log-Mar/Macroenvironmental-Forces.html>.

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