In his seminal Harvard Business Review Article, titled, What is Strategy, Michael Porter writes the following:
“The challenge of developing or reestablishing a clear strategy is often primarily an organizational one and depends on leadership. With so many forces at work against making choices and tradeoffs in organizations, a clear intellectual framework to guide strategy is a necessary counterweight. Moreover, strong leaders willing to make choices are essential. In many companies, leadership has degenerated into orchestrating operational improvements and making deals. But the leader’s role is broader and far more important. General management is more than the stewardship of individual functions. Its core is strategy: defining and communicating the company’s unique position, making trade-offs, and forging fit among activities. The leader must provide the discipline to decide which industry changes and customer needs the company will respond to, while avoiding organizational distractions and maintaining the company’s distinctiveness. Managers at lower levels lack the perspective and the confidence to maintain a strategy. There will be constant pressures to compromise, relax trade-offs, and emulate rivals.
One of the leader’s jobs is to teach others in the organization about strategy—and to say no. Strategy renders choices about what not to do as important as choices about what to do. Indeed, setting limits is another function of leadership. Deciding which target group of customers, varieties, and needs the company should serve is fundamental to developing a strategy. But so is deciding not to serve other customers or needs and not to offer certain features or services. Thus strategy requires constant discipline and clear communication. Indeed, one of the most important functions of an explicit, communicated strategy is to guide employees in making choices that arise because of trade-offs in their individual activities and in day-to-day decisions.”
Throughout human history, the secret of every successful person has been a successful strategy. The secret of every successful family, community, company, and country is also a successful strategy. At the Kenneth Acha Foundation, we believe that everyone is a leader. We lead and influence people in the area of our gifting and calling. As leaders, one of our jobs is to understand strategy for ourselves and to teach those we lead about strategy.
