“There are too many leaders of the U.S. civilian space program, and not enough leadership. These several leaders at this point are not in agreement regarding how best to transition away from 30 years of the space shuttle being the visible centerpiece of the U.S. human space flight effort. Attempts at leadership without agreement among leaders is a recipe for short-term confusion and longer-term drift”. a recent comment from the Washington Post which reflects the lack of strategic leadership as time, technology, politics and economics overtake the vision as the Shuttle Programme comes to an end.

“In more than 40 years of close observation of the U.S. space program, I don’t think there has ever been more uncertainty and fear of impending program collapse. One result of the current confusion is the too-widespread impression that  the final flight of the shuttle means that the U.S. program of human spaceflight has come to an end” writes John Logsdon.

So what is strategic leadership and how would it have prevented the infighting within the US’s Space Programme and allowed it to carry on in a relatively seamless manner?

For me strategic  leadership is about vision it’s about long term projection and the ability to communicate  a dream and make that dream tangible within an organisation. The problem with long term is the ambiguity induced by time. Things change over a period of time and things are changing faster than ever as the pace of life quickens. This makes strategic vision really difficult but really essential in leading an organisation.  More difficult as it is more intangible and  it is more essential to hold an organisation on its course in a swiftly changing environment. Moral courage, drive and determination are all required in a strategic leader in shaping the future and taking an organisation forward.

Strategic leadership also involves risk and its mitigation. Risk is another thing that very few modern organisations have a handle on as evidenced in the recent US banking Crisis and even the more recent struggles with national debt within the European community. Risk involves three things the ability to identify future threats to an organisation, to put in place means of identifying the proximity of those threats and finally preparing  strategies and plans to mitigate those threats. Now again the speed of life makes the management of risk much more difficult as the unforeseen happens in an instant. Take the recent riots in UK  sparked by the police and  the independent police complaints commission  not dealing sensibly with the unfortunate death of a suspected criminal. Now a true strategic risk practitioner may not have seen that coming but surely they would have controlled the rioting in London sooner certainly before it spread to other cities or prevented it taking place in other cities by having contingencies in place. Threats need to be pre-empted if they are to be mitigated hence strategic managers of risk need to be aware of  and sensitive to their changing environment through exploring worst case scenarios. This can be easily accomplished by modelling, gaming or red teaming. Thinking the unthinkable allows for effective contingency planning and aids risk mitigation.  Identified risk also needs to be communicated and devolved to as close to the action as possible, for it is here that the truly empowered and enlightened employee can prevent the threat.

Strategic Leadership is also about talent management; making sure that the right people are in the right place at the right time. Whether they have been nurtured or hired is irrelevant, it is ensuring that they are where they are needed.   I like the following quote as it epitomises talent management to me:

“The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and the self restraint not to meddle with how they do their jobs” Author unknown

Don’t talent manage people out of the organisation by telling them what to do and how to do it . Mentor and develop them to exploit their own individual potential and maximise their utility to the organisation by empowering them by telling them what you want done and affording them the authority and resources to do it ! They will develop and learn even when wrong; now that’s talent management!

Strategic leaders are brave, they are prepared to tolerate mistakes providing they are learned from. Strategic leaders are visionary and excellent communicators. Strategic leaders are risk takers but every risk they take is calculated and every threat mitigated as far is possible.  They believe in the power of the organisation rather than their own power. That’s why true strategic leaders are rare creatures!

The public disturbances and rioting that is going on in London as I write this blog appear to be spreading to other cities across the country. The Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Mayor of London have all returned early from their holidays to provide leadership to a situation where a tragic death has allowed opportunistic petty criminals to exploit a situation which should have been controlled a good deal earlier.  Where are the leaders?

Leaders make decisions and influence decisions as Marshall Goldsmith stated “Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make that decision – not the “right” person, or the “smartest” person, or the most ” qualified” person, and in most cases not you. If you do not influence this person, you will not make a positive difference. Make peace with this. You will have a better life! And you will make more of a positive difference in your organization and you will be happier.” It is up to members of the public, the police, the local communities and the national power structures to make decisions and influence decisions, to become leaders otherwise without such people a nation careers blindly and ignorantly towards anarchy. Basically it is about having the guts to lead!  Every bit of media reporting I hear or see blames someone else: its the rioters fault, its the police’s fault, its the Government’ s fault. Now is not the time to blame but the time to come together as a community the time to replace selfish agendas with social ones.  Leaders rise from such occasions, leaders influence and leaders take responsibility; they are the ones that will allow those who are perpetrating the crimes to see the error of their ways, they are the ones who will ensure that the right  policing measures are put in place to prevent further escalation. They unfortunately seem to be conspicuous by their absence. I wonder where are the leaders?

Who in business truly understands what risk is and how to manage it? Not many I would suggest given the recent crisis in banking and even fewer when it comes to resolving national debt levels. Risk has to become better managed by businesses and politicians if we are to avoid the full effects of the current financial climate.

Risk is key in assessing opportunity as without risk business opportunities would not exist. Everything would be obvious and therefore every opportunity would be seized instantly without fear of failure. Well, human nature does not function that way! Humans are naturally risk averse, our survival instincts steer us away from perceived danger in order to protect us and in doing so they prevent us from exploiting opportunities using our innate intellect to manage and mitigate the risk. It is only when we are forced to take risks that we bring our excellent risk management potential to the fore.

However the national picture is somewhat different national risk now that’s something we leave to the experts  expecting them to use rigour and expertise in their deliberations. Unfortunately many of today’s politicians are not expert and many are less than rigorous in their managing of national financial risk!  Some are just politically irresponsible scoring political points when there is a national debt crisis.

Personal opportunities exist in all our lives and yet we  nearly always shy away from them. We want to be popular, we want to look good, we want to conform and to be correct.  We want to be recognised and rewarded and those actualisation’s are normally associated with conformity rather than originality.  Yet being odd pays in today’s entrepreneurial world as risk takers reap the greatest rewards. Our herd instincts our desire for popularity drive the majority of us away from risk naturally and hence how many times have we not seized an obvious opportunity for fear of failure!

If as individuals we don’t take risks there is very little chance of  business organisations taking risk. The consequences don’t just affect me but all those around me. I do not want to be blamed by those closest to me for strategic failure. Recently businesses have not needed to take risks hence risk mitigation is a lost art to many organisations. Yet business leaders are paid to judge and mitigate risk. Today’s business leaders need to take risks and they need to understand those risks, to identify the warning signs that pre-empt failure. Life is risky and in extreme times life becomes more risky.  Yet  as we enter a global recession no leader seems able to grasp the nettle and seize the opportunity; rather they would follow like lemmings other organisations into the economic precipice.

Politics are a totally different matter and it is here where some of the finest aspects of democracy are exposed as the desire to conform so necessary as an elected politician prevents daring and risk mitigating  leaders from ever achieving political greatness. Bring on the benign dictator or the enlightened autocrat for they are the ones who will light the path to economic recovery. They would take risks and their enlightened approach would ensure that in exercising their judgement they had mitigated the risk  to their people and managed it accordingly to ensure success.  As true leaders they would focus on success rather than avoiding failure. Tough times need tough decision makers who may not choose to conform. The only issue is democracy after all a leader cannot lead without the  peoples’ mandate and yet the majority of the people will always vote for the politician or party who holds the middle ground .

Businesses are the same and businesses now need to be original in their strategic concepts if they are to lead others away from global recession. Strong leadership, strategic vision,  opportunity exploitation and risk mitigation are all essential characteristics required of today’s business and political leaders and yet they are the characteristics that have  been absent when strategic failures are analysed.

During a recent coach mentoring session with a newly appointed production manager in an engineering business the topic of empowerment was raised. This was expected sooner or later as the manager is stereotypically wanting and trying ‘to do it all’ himself; with all the obvious problems and issues resulting. He is clearly over burdened (largely by himself) and experiencing some associated issues and stress. I also know, from other work I am commissioned by the same company to do, he is storing up some less obvious future problems such as alienation of experienced supervisors and uninformed decision making. An apparent solution to his immediate problems and concerns is to include his competent and experienced supervisors in his decision making and delegate accordingly. However, somewhat surprisingly, his proposed solution was to empower his supervisors – an interesting idea to explore, more so in considering the relationship between coaching and mentoring.

My first concern was to ‘calibrate’ our individual perspectives and determine whether the manager understood the meaning of ‘to empower’ and the nuances or differences implied by the two phrases ‘to delegate’ and ‘to empower’. This may seem somewhat pedantic but the significance and impact of perspective and understanding on communication is not lost on me. Interestingly we both did largely agree on what we understood empowerment to be and unsurprisingly for me the differences or nuances between the two were not. My solution was to shift from coach to mentor and talk through and review some training material in relation to his current situation and in so doing using a couple of useful definitions readily available on the www to frame discussion around. Broadly, this is how the session went.

Empowerment is to invest with power or legal authority (source www.thefreedictionary.com). In this respect I draw attention to the specific meanings of individual words within this definition. Namely;

Power is the ability to do something

Authority is the right to do something

Invest is to commit (something value) to gain a return (something of worth)

Empowerment is the practice of sharing information, rewards and power with employees so that they can take initiative and make decisions to solve problems and improve service and performance. Empowerment is based on the idea that giving employees skills, resources, authority, opportunity and motivation as well holding them responsible and accountable for outcomes of their actions will contribute to their competence and satisfaction (source www.BusinessDictionary.com). For me, the ‘acid question’ was; are both you and your team of supervisors in a position to empower and be empowered? His response was a considered and reasoned decision they were not yet and so we moved on to discuss the matter of delegation in the same manner.

Delegation is the granting of authority by one party to another party for agreed purposes (source www.BusinessDirectory.com). The key considerations vis a vis our discussion of empowerment included;

Retention of ultimate accountability – by the manager

Shift of decision making downwards – by involvement / inclusion

Risk versus benefits – understanding what must and needs to be retained

Boundaries – clearly defined to avoid misunderstanding

Expectations – managed both ways from the outset

Support – recognising needs and limitations then addressing them

The result then was for me to shift back to the role of coach and facilitate the manager’s development of an action plan to achieve effective delegation of appropriate tasks whilst concurrently involving his team of supervisors in his decision making. I await the details of his proposed action plan(s) and the results / observations from the implementation of the same with some interest.