How to become a strategic leader (2): A step-by-step guide
In this two-part article series, we demystify strategic leadership to help you become a more strategic leader.
In part one, I introduced the concept of strategic leadership, what strategy is and isn’t, along with three golden rules of strategic leadership; read all about it here. In this article, you will find practical tips and an actionable framework to help you actually become the strategic leader you want to be: With daily, weekly, and quarterly strategic steps, and a strategy cheat sheet for download.
This article series is an expansion of my talk “Stop! Strategy Time” at LeadDev. Watch it here:
Strategic leadership can often sound abstract and hard to put into words. Not only that, the majority of the CTOs, VPs and engineering leaders I work with are so busy running from meeting to meeting, handling team issues or trying to scale, that they have zero time to work on the most important aspect of their job: strategy.
The higher your leadership position, the more strategic your role becomes, and in turn the greater the impact your decisions will have on the business as a whole. The ability of a leader to always see the big picture, identify trends and patterns, and consider a range of perspectives is critical to strategic leadership.
And if you don’t make time for strategic thinking? This can have huge repercussions in terms of managing risk and change, scaling effectively and lasting long-term. But most times, the leaders who have the least time for strategy are the ones who need it the most.
In this article, I lay out exactly what you need to do in order to become a more strategic leader, covering practical steps on how to lead strategically and incorporating strategy into your daily schedule. I’m also giving away a free, downloadable cheat sheet for you to work through in your own time!
Use an existing strategy, or create one
When we say strategy, we mean a document with a longer-term time horizon and focus, which outline:
Goals and priorities,
actions to achieve them, and
available resources
to execute the actions
Start with an already existing strategy that’s documented. If you don’t know your company or team strategy yet, spend two hours looking around at what’s in place for the scope of strategy already.
The length of time this document should cover will differ depending on what size, stage, and industry your organisation is at. As a rule of thumb, it should usually cover at least 6-12 months.
Relevant artefacts to look for can be:
Document title “strategy”
Roadmap
Corporate goals
North Star metrics,
investor pitch decks
If you’ve never written a strategy but are keen to get going, this template is a great place to start.
Strategic leadership isn’t about the documents you write, it’s about your habits. The way you think and spend your time is the kind of leader you are.
A while back, I was trying to figure out how to go from “writing strategy docs” to “being a strategic leader”. I realised that I needed to start with how I spend my own time and what I think about. My meeting calendar was running (ruining) my life, and there’s a good chance your calendar is running yours.
So I’m going to share with you what I created for myself - a structure that we’re going to build into your calendar so you can start becoming a strategic leader today.
Strategic leadership is a habit
A new habit usually takes a little more than two months to develop, and as much as 254 days (8+ months) until it’s fully formed. So, every day counts!
In order to lead strategically, you need to be able to:
zoom out - create space to think about the big picture
zoom in - take actions, set boundaries and say no so you can focus, and communicate what you’re thinking about and actions you're taking. Repeat this at a cadence.
The STABB framework for making strategic leadership a habit
The STABB stands for Space, Think, Act, Boundaries and Broadcast, and is the framework I recommend for making strategic leadership a habit. Let’s break this down into daily, weekly and quarterly activities you should be undertaking in line with this.
Daily
Make space to think about strategy:
Start every work day with 15 minutes of strategy time (put it into your calendar now).
It’s 15 mins because everyone can make 15 minutes. I’ve done this with the busiest CEOs to engineers - they all managed to make the time.
“Start” means, and this is important: You do this *before* you open your work laptop. So before you open all these dopamine-triggering apps like emails and Slack. Start fresh.
Reflect on four strategy questions and write down your answers. For example:
What's the most important thing for us?
What are we not doing to accomplish it?
How can I help my team draw connections between their work and strategy?
How am I investing in capabilities we need to meet our strategic goals?
Repeat this daily. Over time, you’ll build two things: a notebook/document of strategic thoughts which you can refer to in future, and a habit of thinking about strategy more - which will also start showing up over the rest of your day.
Act: Ask strategic questions
Act daily: ask others strategic questions which challenge the status quo and level up conversations to include strategy. For example:
What business problem are we trying to solve?
What assumptions are we making? What are our blind spots?
How does this issue affect other areas of the business?
How will this move us toward our organisation’s strategy?
What’s the long-term impact?
Use these in team meetings, planning sessions and when you’re communicating with your team.
Boundaries and broadcast in prioritising your work
As you prioritise, consider: What should I stop doing today? So many leaders struggle with focus because they are trying to do so many important things all at once.
And broadcast your focus areas for alignment. Depending on your role, do so in your daily standup or just in a weekly update with your boss (but always broadcast).
Weekly
Make even more space to think about strategy:
Every week, spend 30 minutes gathering information to update your big-picture view:
Review the landscape.
Understand where changes may occur, spot trends early on, sharpen strategic thinking and keep track of how your teams are doing
How: put a 30 minute block in your calendar, e.g. on Friday. Areas to look into:
World news
Industry news
Company: Customer insight, Reports
Team/Dpt: Metrics, changes - industry trends, innovation
Ask yourself:
What am I seeing and hearing?
What could it mean for our company?
Actively connect your team with strategy
Start listening. What does your team know about the current status of your project, goals or larger strategy? What are they expecting? How do they feel about the team and the organisation right now?
Talk with them about:
Why are we (not) doing x?
What does success look like?
How does our work connect with the big picture?
And share what you learned this week during your information gathering.
Act strategically when you make decisions
Make strategic decisions by using a model called second-order thinking, where you think through a possible decision, its near-term consequences (“first order”) and second-order consequences (“second order”). This technique helps move past initial instincts and assess choices for real long term value.
To do this, write down:
The Decision, it’s immediate benefits, drawbacks
Future consequences, benefits, drawbacks
Future consequences, benefits, drawbacks
…to evaluate the 2nd and 3rd level consequences
Then choose options with positive 2nd and 3rd order consequences (short-term pain for long-term gain)
Set a reminder to review your decisions three and six months from now
Boundaries in prioritising with teams
Help teams focus on impactful work and get stakeholders on board. Use the questions below during planning sessions, team meetings, and retrospectives to help you and your team focus on strategically important work:
Where can we add the highest value?
What’s most important to the organisation?
What could we do to achieve more, better, faster?
What should we stop doing?
Broadcast every week
Broadcasting is about pushing information, and not waiting until others, like your boss or stakeholders, pull information from you. Give them short weekly updates on your plans, and share with them context for how you and your team made the decisions you landed on. This post has a template and a concrete example from an engineering leader who successfully uses this approach with their teams.
Quarterly
Space for thinking and learning
At the end of each quarter, review the quarter by yourself and with your teams. Check in on:
What did I/we learn about
Decisions
Progress
Risks
Impediments
What’s (not) working
Space for strategic review
Review your existing strategy to check if it’s still the right one. Your strategy shouldn’t be a document in a drawer, but actively used and revisited on a regular basis. Check it for:
Internal consistency - are processes and policies in line with what you’re trying to do? Will big organisational changes make achieving strategy harder?
Consistency with the environment - market changes? New trends?
Available resources - availability of money, lots of people leaving, or new capabilities developed during training and ability to accelerate.
Degree of risk - strategy always deals with uncertainty and unknowns. It’s a bet - based on the above, too much risk or right for the organisation?
Time horizon - do you need to slow down or accelerate aspects?
Workability - is the strategy still workable, i.e. are we getting the results or seeing the trends we were aiming for? Is there alignment on it? Is it giving us ample space to plan, then execute?
I recommend doing this quarterly, but you may need to do more frequently or less frequently, e.g., during times of high-change, in volatile environments or markets, or in a high-growth startup. Or perhaps internal or external factors signal that you should revisit your strategy, e.g., company M&A (mergers and acquisitions), layoffs, hypergrowth.
(Strategic review points adapted from Seymour Tilles, HBR Magazine)
Align planning through boundaries and broadcast
Plan work for the upcoming quarter with your team based on the strategy and communicate for alignment.
Where are we now? (Situation Assessment)
Where do we want to be? (Strategic Direction)
How do we plan to get there? (Implementation Planning)
How will we monitor progress? (Monitoring)
What will we not do?
(Source: Leadership Strategies)
And that’s it! Consider strategic leadership officially demystified.
Take a STABB at the bagel of strategy every day: create space to think, then act on it, set boundaries, and broadcast. Follow the steps above to make strategic leadership your habit, and start being a strategic leader, today!
Remember, you can download my free cheat sheet here.
