The Fourth Discipline of the Trusted Strategic Advisor: Think Strategically

The following is an excerpt from Influencing Leaders: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor by James E. Lukaszewski with Helio Fred Garcia.

Every staff function seems concerned about being more strategic.

The word strategy and the word strategic are among the most overused by staff people and management. Despite overuse, there still appears to be little evidence that staff people truly understand what it means to be strategic or to be able to recognize what a strategy is. Since our backgrounds are in communication, we got tired of hearing these words quite early in our careers, only to find that these words were used in every other staff function, too. In human resources, the legal department, security, finance, IT, even Facilities Management, “being a strategic player” and similar notions saturate the staff environment.

Jim was once asked to speak at the inaugural meeting of a special trade association consisting solely of the chief litigation officers for America’s largest companies. He was clearly somewhat puzzled when he got the request to speak. The gentlemen who contacted Jim said, “We’d like to hear your presentation on developing a strategic mindset.” Jim’s response was, “I’m not an attorney. I work with lots of attorneys, but attorneys seem to have a fair amount of juice on their own. Your members must represent literally hundreds of trillions of dollars of potential sales and revenue to your client organization.” He agreed. So, Jim asked, “They have problems getting to the table anyway?”

The response astounded Jim. “Even having these very significant dollar responsibilities, attorneys feel that they have difficulty with and little status in the operational decision-making process. Attorneys feel that clients don’t listen to or simply ignore their advice.” Here comes the shocker: “We need to be at the table much more frequently, preferably, all the time.” Jim had thought that attorneys were always successful in getting themselves welded to the hips of most senior executives.

Well, imagine that: attorneys feeling that they are not at the table, either. The rest of us tend to feel that only the attorneys get heard. At the conference, after Jim’s talk, the questions from these high-powered corporate lawyers were simple, direct, yet often as naïve as he hears from any other staff function. Fred also has had similar requests, from organizations of defense counsel. They don’t have a problem getting to the table during litigation. But they’re not asked to the table as business advisors. And it’s precisely as business advisors that they can provide input that could potentially prevent litigation into the future.

The Strategic Perspective

This “lack of hearing” by those in operations causes a tension between staff functions and operating activities that can get in the way of building relationships. Prepare to move beyond this tension by focusing on how to move issues and questions forward from an operating perspective.

Developing a strategic mindset is crucial to having the relationship, influence, and access that most staff people crave, or feel entitled to. We begin the process of thinking about developing a strategic mindset by understanding what strategy is. Jim has a rather unusual approach. You have achieved a strategic mindset when you are able to verbally inject mental energy into an organization’s operational processes to help leaders and their organization achieve management objectives.

Fred has a similar idea, expressed a bit differently. Fred describes strategy as the alignment of any given task to the fulfillment of a clearly defined purpose. A strategic mindset, what Fred describes as being habitually strategic, is the capacity to defer decisions on tactics—what to do—until there’s clarity of why to do it. To fulfill a purpose. Or as Jim puts it, to achieve management objectives.

Strategy is the most crucial product of leadership. It is the ability to be strategic that defines the value of a leader. The reality, as we have seen, is that the higher one goes in an organization, the less actual hands-on the work leaders have or need to do. The leader’s attention becomes divided among teaching and leading people in the right direction; observing, correcting, and tweaking what is actually going on; and, much of the time, looking over the horizon to identify future destinations and the directions to get to the future, and the people necessary to make it happen.

Becoming a strategist means committing to a mental approach that out-thinks the competition, the opposition, or the critics and produces a distinctive or unique approach, series of steps, solution options, or direction choices.

Strategic energy is what drives businesses and organizations, guides leaders, and sets the directions for teams, players, employees, customers, and others. Strategy is the attractant that draws people together and helps them focus on moving in the same direction. Strategy is among the most positive and energizing states of mind. Most of us gravitate toward strategists and leaders for this very reason: they know where we’re going, and they have some idea of what our destination is, even if they have very little information on the specifics or the mechanics of actually getting there.

Strategy focuses the energy and momentum for whatever the current plan of action happens to be. Assuming that the current plan is based on fundamentally sound information, the advisor’s question is, “What part of the overall strategy is your part of the plan accomplishing, enhancing, or advancing?”

Influencing Leaders: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor provides the proven framework for becoming a trusted strategic influencer partner that leaders turn to when facing critical decisions. The book presents seven essential disciplines: establishing trustworthiness, mastering verbal influence, developing management perspective, thinking strategically, recognizing patterns, structuring constructive advice, and teaching leaders to apply counsel effectively.

Influencing Leaders is perfect for mid-career professionals, external consultants, and anyone aspiring to influence organizational leaders. Influencing Leaders demonstrates that true influence is about mastering the disciplines of foresight, strategic thinking, and trust that make trusted strategic advisors and influencers essential to leaders making their most challenging decisions.

Pre-order your copy of Influencing Leaders here.