Far too many lead­ers pol­ish their busi­ness plans un­til they shine, yet fail to add the force that makes the plan breathe. The lead­er­ship strat­e­gy. The for­tunes of a busi­ness are tied in­ex­tri­ca­bly to the ef­fec­tive­ness of the lead­er­ship team. Ex­clud­ing a plan for max­i­miz­ing the ef­fort at the top, is a haz­ardous move to me. This pil­lar har­ness­es lead­er­ship pow­er and en­sures that de­ci­sion mak­ing is syn­chro­nized and not left to chance.

Lead­er­ship is the in­vis­i­ble hand that in­flu­ences busi­ness out­comes. The lead­ers of a busi­ness are the ar­chi­tects whose de­ci­sions lay the foun­da­tion for suc­cess. The out­comes of these de­ci­sions shape the per­son­al­i­ty, the cul­ture, the op­er­a­tional suc­cess and the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in­dex of a busi­ness. Lead­er­ship pow­er there­fore, must be har­nessed in­ten­tion­al­ly and not left to chance.

A lead­er­ship strat­e­gy is the ac­cel­er­a­tor that pro­vides con­sis­ten­cy of in­flu­ence across the busi­ness, so that out­comes are not dis­joint­ed. If lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to turn busi­ness plans in­to suc­cess sto­ries, then a dis­joint­ed team is less like­ly to do so, than a co­he­sive one. If the lead­er­ship team is not uni­fied, the busi­ness will be frag­ment­ed. If lead­ers are work­ing in si­los, the busi­ness may be­come en­trapped in con­tin­u­al­ly un­der­per­form­ing cy­cles.

Typ­i­cal­ly, lead­er­ship strate­gies have both a long-term and a short-term for­mat for in­flu­enc­ing be­hav­iour. The long-term strat­e­gy dri­ves the tem­plate that sup­ports the pur­pose of the busi­ness. It is a mark­er for build­ing lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ty and en­dur­ing im­pact. The short-term strat­e­gy is more re­spon­sive to chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions, in sup­port of tac­ti­cal goals.

A busi­ness plan in the hands of a dis­joint­ed lead­er­ship team that is not unit­ed by a strat­e­gy, is a haz­ard. Lead­ers may be­lieve that they have a roadmap for ex­e­cut­ing goals, when in fact, all that they have is a plan that sets di­rec­tion. With­out the strat­e­gy to en­sure that the peo­ple side of the busi­ness moves in sync with the plan, suc­cess may oc­cur by ac­ci­dent, in­stead of by in­ten­tion.

With­out the steady­ing force of a bind­ing strat­e­gy, a dis­joint­ed lead­er­ship team can be­come ra­dioac­tive. Dis­joint­ed­ness guar­an­tees an ir­reg­u­lar, in­con­sis­tent roll­out of a busi­ness plan. The ef­fec­tive lead­ers on the team will ex­e­cute their por­tions of the plan bril­liant­ly. Their less ef­fec­tive coun­ter­parts, will strug­gle to match the su­perla­tive out­comes.

A miss­ing lead­er­ship strat­e­gy im­pos­es un­nec­es­sary and avoid­able con­straints on a busi­ness and its lead­er­ship team. One such con­straint is cul­tur­al drift. Each de­part­ment or team is like­ly to in­vent its own norms, val­ues and rit­u­als. In­stead of one uni­fied cul­ture, sub-cul­tures fu­elled by com­pet­ing de­part­men­tal tribes emerge. This sit­u­a­tion can plunge a busi­ness in­to in­ter­nal tur­moil and sab­o­tage its ef­fort to dri­ve busi­ness plans to de­sired fruition.

We are in the sea­son of strat­e­gy dis­cus­sions and busi­ness plan­ning. It’s the time of year when busi­ness­es are craft­ing their strate­gic plans for the up­com­ing cal­en­dar year. The rev­enue num­bers are be­ing crunched, the sales tar­gets are be­ing set and the mar­ket­ing strate­gies are be­ing pol­ished. The lead­ers of suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es know and un­der­stand that strat­e­gy dri­ves suc­cess.

A de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy that cod­i­fies lead­er­ship choic­es in­to a pur­pose-dri­ven, dis­ci­plined play­book, for­ti­fies a busi­ness in the face of im­pend­ing un­cer­tain­ties and is cen­tral to en­sur­ing that plans don’t go adrift. Of course, this means go­ing be­yond a pol­ished busi­ness plan.

It means that the burn­ing ques­tion oc­cu­py­ing the minds of lead­er­ship teams in this plan­ning sea­son should be, “What is go­ing to dri­ve our lead­er­ship strat­e­gy for the up­com­ing year?”

An ef­fec­tive re­sponse to this ques­tion, will pro­vide a busi­ness with the strate­gic com­pass to dri­ve sus­tained rel­e­vance and com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.