Since the early 70s, we’ve seen constant change in strategy and leadership approaches. Change is needed to keep up with the speed and complexity of our evolving world and technological advancements.
- A set of skills for agile leadership
- Collaboration vs teamwork
- The importance of conversation and trust
- The 4 questions & 10 skills of strategic doing
- All in all
From waterfall modeling to agile approaches, we have been moving away from hierarchies and toward networks. However, as the complexity of the issues managers must deal with daily rises, so must their ability to come up with creative solutions. Here’s how Strategic Doing works to make that possible.
a collection of abilities for agile leadership
As a project manager, you are well-versed in both long-term strategic planning and unexpected, unforeseen obstacles.
Scrum and other agile approaches support planning and problem management for unforeseen issues. The nature of problems themselves is growing more and more complex, and the solutions you require also become more difficult, as a result of the world’s rapid pace of change and the speed of technical advancements.
What if I don’t have all 10 of those skills, you might wonder. The difficulty you have as a manager is to develop the abilities inside your team or network, create the atmosphere to combine them, and develop new solutions.You are not expected to be an expert in all of them.
Coordination versus teamwork
Let’s quickly explore how teamwork and cooperation vary in order to better understand how to adopt Strategic Doing.
Teamwork is about working together toward a common objective, whereas collaboration is a process where you use the resources in your network that already exist to generate new value.
When working together, you will develop and direct the collaboration process through organized talks as opposed to establishing roles on the team and making choices. Then, leadership is shared among your team.
You will need more than just communication and the necessary 10 skills—you will also need trust—to adopt Strategic Doing and go from conversations to quantifiable results.
The significance of dialogue and trust
The foundation of strategic doing is the concept that complex partnerships begin with talks that have a basic structure and direction and take place in a setting that is secure for all parties.
A crucial component of every team or network is conversation. Why? There are two primary factors: first, you have influence over how the conversation proceeds, and second, the majority of our information is implicit rather than explicit.
As a leader, you may structure the dialogue to highlight the important, beneficial expertise and experience that currently exists inside your team or network.
In order to effectively collaborate and use current resources, trust is also essential. With time, trust will develop as a result of consistent patterns and a secure environment.
The 10 talents of strategic action and the 4 questions
Strategic doing may be described as a continuous cycle of thinking and acting. Even with the same skills and questions, going back and forth as much as necessary is a normal part of the process.
Prior to starting
We previously discussed how important communication and trust are to the process. These are the two abilities you need to practice before starting:
Create a secure setting for deep, discussions that are concentrated; dialogues that take place in a relaxed environment without interruption from outside sources.
Reframe these discussions around a thank-you question.
What are our options?
After talking about the strategic result you want to attain, consider the steps that will assist you get there.
Find hidden resources People are open to sharing in order to open up new possibilities.
Leverage and join these resources.
What ought we to do?
It’s time to concentrate on which of those things makes sense to focus on after working on what you COULD accomplish.
You may find simple opportunities with significant effects by using the “Big Easy” matrix.
Track your development.and transform your “Big Easy” into a result with quantifiable qualities.
What are our plans?
Transform your planning into action by identifying concrete, urgent activities you can take to reach your objective.al.
Define one or more Pathfinder projects and include benchmarks.
Make a quick action plan. with each person moving a little bit.
How about our 30/30
Decide when to have the next talk so that you may go over what you’ve learned, make any required adjustments, and continue working toward a solution.
“30/30 meetings” to gather information and make adjustments.
Promote your improved teamwork techniques.
So overall
Many different sectors are using strategic doing to address a variety of complicated problems. Remember that there are numerous instances where you may apply these agile leadership abilities, even if your business is not yet prepared to implement Strategic Doing as a whole or it doesn’t seem to be a perfect fit for you.
Visit the websites of the Strategic Doing Institute or Agile Strategy Lab to learn more about strategic doing.
WHO THE AUTHOR IS
A #1 Amazon New Release in six categories, “Strategic Doing – Ten Skills for Agile Leadership” is co-authored by Ed Morrison. He has been creating brand-new, network-based models for strategy in wide-open, weakly linked networks since 1993. In today’s global market, these strategies highlight the strategic significance of targeted collaboration and innovation. To speed up these partnerships, he created a discipline called Strategic Doing, which is now extensively practiced throughout the United States and is increasingly attracting interest abroad.
Ed participated on consulting teams for customers like Ford Motor Company, Volvo, and General Electric while working for the corporate strategy consulting firm Telesis. His professional career began in Washington, D.C., as a legislative aide for an Ohio congressman. Both a staff attorney in the United States Senate and a Federal Trade Commission attorney.