Do you feel that your organization is operating up to its potential? If you are anything like the leaders that the authors of this book have dealt with, the answer is no.

Guiding your organization towards optimal performance is a significant challenge, and The Power of Strategic Commitment points out that while today’s business is more complex than ever before, customers want to reduce their complexity when dealing with a seller or provider.

This conspires to make optimal performance a moving target. And in order to achieve a higher-performing state, there must be a condition of total ownership and alignment for the organization’s direction and goals, with everyone acting in concert with the desired future state.

Here’s the rub: The book notes that Professor Robert Kaplan of the Harvard Business School and his associate David Norton at the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative have determined that as much as 90% of all corporate strategies are not executed successfully. Most corporate initiatives fail.

The book points out a common way to fail. Have you ever been a part of an organization that refers to their corporate strategy – one that was developed with the help of consultants – as “the XYZ consulting group strategy”?

The recommendation is that leaders must always be perceived as the owners of the strategy. They must also own it more so that simply setting the strategic direction; leaders should also avoid handing off of “change management” to HR or an outside consulting group. This produces doubt and skepticism and will erode commitment. You need more than a slide deck or a memo to achieve commitment.

What is required is to have senior leadership engage in a robust dialog about the content of the strategy. Middle managers must be told the truth about why changes are required and what the likely outcomes will be. Full disclosure is required for full commitment.

The advice is that leaders need to focus on both the content and context aspects of their strategy.

Content: Validity in the objectives, plans; that they are relevant and accurate.

Context: Clarity around the messaging. It is about getting everyone on the same page about content.

Leaders must also be perceived as credible, sincere, competent, having the courage and resolve to make the strategy stick, and they truly care about the impact of the initiative. And don’t delude yourself into thinking that the business is moving so fast that you don’t have time to deal with the context issues. Slow is fast. Taking time to gain strategic commitment pays off; a slower start ensures a faster finish.

The book did an excellent job of contrasting commitment and compliance:

Overall, I found that the book provided an excellent discussion on the need for strategic commitment and how to achieve it – along with avoiding common mistakes.

Author: Dave Moran
Visit Dave’s Blog here

Josh Leibner, Gershon Mader, and Alan Weiss have
written a book that is a mix of diagnostics and a plan to fix. What you might ask?

Some time ago I read an excellent book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership
Fable by Patrick Lencioni. The dilemma after reading the book was now that I know what
causes the dysfunctions, what do I really do?

Many of us have had the challenge of walking in to a job where a prior toxic leader
left way too many emotional landmines, or if we are truthful, have done that ourselves.
Then there is the situation of starting up with a new team – sort of like mass adoption.
How does a new leader, or business leadership group , deal with these situations and
become a real team – committed to a joint outcome.

What the authors do in The Power of Strategic Commitment is three really powerful things.

First, this is a self-help book with case studies and examples that help you look at your
current situation and how to diagnose where to start and how to create a road map and actions
to make progress in reaching the destination. They do this by sharing real situations from real
companies in the leader’s own words.

Second, the book lays out tools and techniques that frame how to address situations you want
to improve. One of my favorites is a frame work in Chapter 7 that identifies behaviors that increase
or decrease trust and focused on what you might consider doing about them.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not say this. This book can REALLY help IF you want to take
your game, or more importantly – your business leadership team’s game, to the next level. However,
you cannot do it without taking a look at the mirror first.

Add this book to your toolkit for executive change management, clarifying strategy, how to
better communicate, and maybe even personal change management.

Cheers!

PS. The leadership diagnostics in the Appendix are alone a great reason to buy this book.

Rick Otero, EVP
Capital One Bank

“The Power of Strategic Commitment” should come with a highlighter and margins, wide enough to accommodate notes about examples (IBM, Southwest Airlines), lists of things you can do to become a truly effective leader and to help you remember supervisors who managed but did not lead.

The authors contrast employee “compliance” with “commitment” and posit that employee commitment is what makes a business successful. My background is in social work and I was surprised at how much social science, human behavior and motivation found its way into a practical business text.

The authors know what many business authors and business “leaders” do not: it is all about the people you work with, what makes them productive and how you can empower them to contribute. Not only should the book be required reading in Management 101 but it should be part of every leadership training program in the country.

It is not enough to talk about authenticity, integrity, courage, support, honesty, passion and empowerment. Few would argue with these terms. What makes the book a must read is the discussion on why these traits are central to leadership, what your employees are looking for in a leader and how you can develop your own skill set. Sadly, there are plenty of examples of what happens when managers do not have these traits and what happens to good plans when there may be compliance but no real commitment to success.

If you are afraid that a social service approach to leadership is “too soft and mushy,” read the book. Real leadership is harder than rocks and requires courage that many simply do not have. When done well, however, the leader grows as a person as does his/her management team and employees. When people are committed to the same vision (we often say that successful nonprofits are driven by a shared “passion” for the cause), employees are empowered to make the enterprise effective, provide better services or products and to meet the needs of customers and clients. Productivity rises, problems are averted (or at least quickly addressed), work is personally rewarding (and not just monetarily) and customers are better served. Not only will the organization achieve its goals but I bet staff turnover and expenses will be reduced as well.

Reading the Table of Contents is instructive and the sub-headings alone are useful prescriptions. The authors discuss “consensus” as a strategy and the Margaret Thatcher quote should be needlepointed and displayed in conference rooms throughout business (and government). Mrs. Thatcher said, “. to me consensus seems to be: the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects.” When you read the section “Why slow is fast” you will think twice about consensus as a goal. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Appendix leads with “Tips, Techniques and Tools” and turns the text into a legitimate “how-to-do-it” and not just a set of valuable observations.

David Zemel, Principal
On Track Consulting, LLC
www.ontrackok.net