Leadership’s Competitive Advantage

By

Dr. Alfred M. Coke

Most North American businesses are average. Would you like to break out of this pack of mediocrity? Moving to the head of your industry is not so difficult if you reconsider an underused resource – your leadership potential.

There are huge voids of leadership in businesses. Managers are doing activities but they are not leading.  I see it frequently in my consulting practice. You experience it every day at your work place. The result is a significant loss of a desirable strategic edge to you over your industry.

To move an organization toward its full potential a manager needs two core competencies. They are managership and leadership. The skill sets are cousins and not interchangeable. The first, managership, is concerned with organization care while the second, leadership, is concerned with people care.

We are fair at managership because management sciences are sophisticated, documented, and validated. Business schools adequately teach these skills. Missing from our tool kit is a full understanding, appreciation, and application of leadership as a strategic tool.

Investing in technology will get managerial results. This can be calculated as two plus two equals four. Those returns are acceptable but not exciting to employees or shareholders. If you want results far greater than four you need to use the other skill set - leadership.

The only thing that separates your company from everyone else is the smartness of your people - your intellectual capital. Investing in your critical brain ware – people’s intellectual capital - will get a greater return. To get this wealth of untapped energy management must provide a comfort zone for employees to excel. But how to create that zone has been a continuous search of researchers, consultants, and business people.

Our human comfort zone is the need for structure, direction, and stability. When this occurs the provider is seen as a leader. Unfortunately these three elements are grossly absent in the workplace. Fortunately this shortfall can be fixed without a lot of fanfare or expense.  The fix is a simple process.

To take advantage of leadership’s inherent referent power you must provide employees with four key items.

1. A clearly articulated vision statement of what you want the company to become.
2. A short powerful mission statement defining the company’s purpose.
3. A set of strategic goals that bring the vision to life in concrete, measurable terms.
4. A group of defined strategies to get to your future.

Providing this umbrella of definitions signals an application of the leader’s wisdom, judgment, and experience. This promotes confidence on the part of the employees toward their leadership. However the biggest payoff is the disproportionate positive results of this leadership behavior, hence a competitive advantage.

In Summary

Breaking out of the crowd means you have a competitive advantage. Strategic leadership is having the courage to establish a future direction, communicate a strategic intent to move in that direction, and act with boldness in the execution of that intent.