Strategic Leadership Primer: 3rd Edition - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

General Marshall is alleged to have made this observation as he reflected upon his early years as Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) in the beginning months of World War II. Marshall apparently believed his previous education, training, and experience had not adequately prepared him for high-level leadership.1 As the CSA, his success depended upon his ability to persuade influential people and organizations, both in and out of government, to employ their efforts on behalf of his vision of a winning wartime strategy and to mobilize the Army to make that strategy a reality. General Marshall’s particular insights in this matter support the belief that beyond the direct and organizational levels is a third level of leadership: the strategic level. This Primer is intended to set the stage for a greater understanding and more in-depth study of leadership at the strategic level—the context, challenges, characteristics, and requirements of strategic leadership. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of strategic leadership. General Marshall seems to have intuitively understood that the development of a national strategy and the force structure to execute that strategy required a complex decision making structure at the national and even international levels. As CSA, Marshall collaborated with civilian leaders to develop a vast industrial war machine and coordinated among the allied nations to ensure unity of effort. Since Marshall’s time as CSA, the political complexity of these national and international decision making structures has continued to grow. Therefore, to be effective in today’s strategic arena, senior military leaders and their staffs must understand the Nation’s strategic vision and how strategy is formulated. As well, they must appreciate the environment and multiple cultures in which they will operate, the competencies they must develop, and the tasks they must perform. Bringing the sum of their intellect and experience to bear, they must conceive a positive vision of the future and work towards those stated ends by developing policies and strategies that allow the clear articulation of the corresponding ways and means. In short, strategic leaders must succeed in an environment marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Though the lines between these levels sometimes blur, we distinguish the strategic level of leadership from the tactical and operational levels in order to better understand the unique roles and responsibilities of today’s senior leaders. At the turn of the 21st Century, discussions about the realities of military conflict in the Information Age have addressed the concept of the “Strategic Corporal,” claiming that the mandates of strategic leadership now have the potential to extend to the lowest levels of military organizations—asserting that the most junior member’s actions can have strategic impact and implications. This Primer asserts that this is very different from exercising strategic leadership yet, more than ever, every level of the organization must appreciate its responsibilities, functions and impacts at the strategic level. To accommodate this multi-level awareness requirement, strategic leaders have a responsibility to spread knowledge and values throughout their organizations by clearly communicating a vision, shaping climate, influencing culture, coaching, mentoring, teaching, and exemplifying appropriate behaviors.

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