Comments on: Issues in strategy implementation: Leadership http://www.atlanticcanadabusinessblog.com/index.php/2007/03/10/strategy/leadership-needed-for-strategy-implementation/ Innovative solutions to complex business problems Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:57:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 By: Mike Bird http://www.atlanticcanadabusinessblog.com/index.php/2007/03/10/strategy/leadership-needed-for-strategy-implementation/comment-page-1/#comment-84783 Mike Bird Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:55:39 +0000 http://www.atlanticcanadabusinessblog.com/index.php/2007/03/10/strategy/leadership-needed-for-strategy-implementation/#comment-84783 Late, late, comment - apologies, but I've only just discovered your blog. I was intrigued by your thoughts on leadership and the CEO's behaviour after agreeing to a new protocol. A couple of observations - "The CEO agreed..." Hmm. Doesn't sound like the CEO was ready to go, but agreed because he was asked to do so. Sounds also like the processes were not in place to handle a customer issue raised at the CEO level - were I a customer with an issue and had access to the CEO of my vendor, I would not accept being shunted back to the helpdesk. If I trusted the helpdesk, I would not have called the CEO; so the CEO's behaviour in response to the customer is rational. What I read here is a failure of leadership, but not of the type you describe. The CEO accepted a proposal without first having required that a specific protocol be set up to handle CEO-level queries. So the issue - it seems to me - was not that the CEO did not model the behaviour that others wanted to see (Q: was it the behaviour he wanted to see?). The real leadership issue was that he had not ensured that the process to handle queries at his level was set up in such a way that he and the customers could trust it. I have problems with the notion of leadership as central to change. Maybe it is: but I would sooner see leadership that makes new ways of working easier than the old ways, rather than leadership that says 'follow me' without putting in place the support mechanisms first... And it is these mechanisms - the ways we enable the new ways of working - that is, to my mind, at the heart of strategy implementation. Because if the mechanisms are in place, then implementation simply becomes how we work round here - for working in the new way is easier than the old. Mike Late, late, comment - apologies, but I’ve only just discovered your blog. I was intrigued by your thoughts on leadership and the CEO’s behaviour after agreeing to a new protocol. A couple of observations - “The CEO agreed…” Hmm. Doesn’t sound like the CEO was ready to go, but agreed because he was asked to do so. Sounds also like the processes were not in place to handle a customer issue raised at the CEO level - were I a customer with an issue and had access to the CEO of my vendor, I would not accept being shunted back to the helpdesk. If I trusted the helpdesk, I would not have called the CEO; so the CEO’s behaviour in response to the customer is rational.

What I read here is a failure of leadership, but not of the type you describe. The CEO accepted a proposal without first having required that a specific protocol be set up to handle CEO-level queries. So the issue - it seems to me - was not that the CEO did not model the behaviour that others wanted to see (Q: was it the behaviour he wanted to see?). The real leadership issue was that he had not ensured that the process to handle queries at his level was set up in such a way that he and the customers could trust it.

I have problems with the notion of leadership as central to change. Maybe it is: but I would sooner see leadership that makes new ways of working easier than the old ways, rather than leadership that says ‘follow me’ without putting in place the support mechanisms first…

And it is these mechanisms - the ways we enable the new ways of working - that is, to my mind, at the heart of strategy implementation. Because if the mechanisms are in place, then implementation simply becomes how we work round here - for working in the new way is easier than the old.

Mike

]]>