Strategic Leadership

Strategic Leadership : 

Strategic Leadership Prof Kishor Jagirdar kishorjagirdar@yahoo.co.in

What is Strategic Leadership : 

What is Strategic Leadership It refers to a manager’s ability to articulate a strategic vision for the company, or a part of the company and motivate others to buy into that vision. 1) Vision, eloquence and consistency 2) Commitment 3) Being well informed 4) Willingness to delegate and empower 5) Astute use of power 6) Emotional intelligence

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Continued…….. Self awareness – The ability to understand ones own moods, emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others. Self –regulation- the ability to control or direct disruptive impulses or moods, that is ,to think before acting Motivation - a passion for work that goes beyond money or status and a propensity to peruse goals and energy and persistence. Empathy- understanding the feelings and viewpoints of subordinates, and taking those into account when making decisions Social skills- Friendliness with a purpose

Cognitive Biases and Strategic Decision making : 

Cognitive Biases and Strategic Decision making The prior hypothesis bias.- It refers to the fact that the decisions makers who have strong prior beliefs about the relationships between two variables tend to make decisions on the basis of these beliefs even when they are provided with evidence that their beliefs are wrong. Moreover they tend to seek and use information that is consistent with their prior belief which ignoring the information that is contradicting those beliefs.

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Continued……2 Escalating commitment – it occurs when decision makers, having already committed significant resources to the project, commit even more resources if they receive feedback that the project is failing. This may be an irrational response; a more logical response would be to cut the losses and move out rather than escalate expenses. Feelings of personal responsibility apparently induce decision makers to stick to with a project despite evident that its failing.

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Continued……2 Reasoning by analogy – involves the use of simple analogies to make sense of complex problems. The problem with this heuristic is that the analogy may no be valid.

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Continued……2 Representative ness- is rooted in the tendency to generalize from a small sample, let alone from a single case. In many respects, the dot com boom of the late 1990s was based on reasoning by analogy a representative ness. Prospective entrepreneurs saw some of the earlier companies such as Amazon and yahoo achieve rapid success, at least judged by some metrics. Reasoning by analogy from a very small sample, they assumed that any Dot-Com could achieve similar success. The result was a massive wave of start ups that jumped into the internet space in an attempt to capitalize on the perceived opportunities. That vast majority of companies went bankrupt is the testament to the fact that the analogy was wrong and the success of the small sample of early entrants was no guarantee that all Dot-Coms would succeed.

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Continued……2 Illusion of control - the tendency to over estimate ones ability to control events. General or top managers seem to be particularly prone to these biases; having risen to the top of an organization, they tend to be overconfident about their ability to succeed.

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Continued……2 Hubris hypothesis – According to Richard Roll, such tendencies of over-confidence Leads to what he calls the hubris hypothesis of takeovers. Roll argues that top managers are typically overconfident about their abilities to create value by acquiring another company. Hence they end up making poor aquisition decisions, often paying too much for the companies they acquire, subsequently, servicing the debt taken to finance such an acquisition makes it all but impossible to make money form the acquisition.

Techniques for improving Decision Making : 

Techniques for improving Decision Making Group think and strategic decisions Devils Advocacy Dialectic inquiry

The strategic management process : 

The strategic management process Strategy making in an unpredictable world. Strategy making by lower level managers Serendipity and strategy Intended and emergent strategies

Strategic planning in practice : 

Strategic planning in practice Scenario planning Involving functional managers Strategic intent