Today Mike Brice from Brice Consulting is our guest and raises the point about the importance of strategic leadership. Mike Brice is a trusted advisor with a long history of creating success.
Taking the Time to be Strategic
Why do owners and leaders fight being strategic? It is a chronic problem in many businesses. It is not that the leadership team is not capable of being strategic but taking the time to be strategic.
Time is a critical commodity and most work environments are designed (most often by accident) to reward people for being busy. The easiest way to be busy is to be involved solving the most critical problem of the minute.
Organizations that thrive on crises are feeding a reactive process and unfortunately the reward system (for being visibly busy) is counterproductive to being proactive and strategic, eliminating crises and being more productive.
What is the corrective action or solution?
The key step to changing the crisis environment is to take the time to be strategic. While we can get immediate satisfaction from solving an important problem and our ego stroked by the attention it gets, the effort solving the crisis does nothing to prevent it from happening again. Inventory your daily activities and look at how much of the day or week is devoted to tactical matters compared to how much is devoted to stepping back and identifying strategies on how to do things right, assign them to subordinates so that crisis can be dealt with more effectively and efficiently than having them rise to your level for action. Schedule your strategic time each day or week. Collect things beforehand that need “strategic” attention. Prioritize issues into what is important and what is not. . . .
Read the complete article about Strategic Leadership.
About the Author:
Mike Brice, President of Brice Consulting, has held a series of successful management positions in Northwest companies including PACCAR, Fluke, AVTECH and Nova Information Systems. At Nova (a Fast 50 High Tech company for three consecutive years) he was co-owner and President for 5 years before completing a successful sale of the company to IKON Office Solutions. Mike remained for 5 years as Marketplace President managing a regional company providing IT infrastructure equipment, systems and related consulting to major companies in the Northwest.
Phone: (206)226-1617 Blog
