Strategic Leadership

Having visited Singapore this week, I was struck with just how successful this country appears to have been in achieving their vision since independence. In terms of education levels, gross domestic product per person and population health, they are now one of the most advanced countries in the world. In “HQ – Redefining Business Leadership” (an Asian Leadership journal, Issue 2, 2012), an article by Hampden-Turner et al., attributed this success to a Confucian/Taoist worldview which “allows them to reconcile two apparently opposing positions”. According to the authors, these two positions are capitalism (competition and individualism) and socialism (cooperation and community).

The assertion is that the reconciliation has been possible due to Singaporean culture which is neither too “individualist” nor too “collectivist”; and neither too “universal” nor too “particular”. So can this success be replicated elsewhere? Is the culture the driver of success or incidental? Notwithstanding the local culture, there must have been a sense of “strategic leadership” to achieve a vision such as Singapore’s. One of the most interesting writers on strategy has published a short article on “Inc.” (March 2012, www.inc.com) which details the definition of strategic leadership. According to Paul Schoemaker, it’s hard to be a strategic leader unless you know what strategic leaders are supposed to do...

Here is a summary of the “6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers” along with further implications (“et alors?”).

Strategic Leadership

Adaptive strategic leaders do six things well:

Anticipate

·         Look for “game-changing” information on the peripheries – search beyond the boundaries

·         Build wide external networks to better scan the horizon

Think Critically

·         Reframe problems to get to the root causes and uncover bias in organisational decisions

·         Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own

Interpret

·         Seek patterns in multiple sources of data and encourage others to do the same

·         Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses

Decide

·         Frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter – balance speed and rigour

·         Take a stand even with incomplete information – balance quality and agility

Align

·         Understand others’ agendas and bring tough issues to the surface

·         Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn

·         Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs and shift course quickly if necessary

·         Celebrate both successes and failures that provide insight

Et alors?

Singapore certainly seems to have exemplified strategic leadership in positioning itself relative to its “competitors”. Not only was there an internal drive to develop, but success appears to have come from promoting its relative merits compared to alternative locations. Singapore has previously sought to attract all talent and businesses arriving in the region and they appear to have succeeded with this objective. Strategic leadership is about “anticipation” – the external view of the context is critically important. Furthermore this is dynamic – it applies as much to timing as to location since the learning and adaptation has to be quicker than the competition. The success achieved by Singapore could be seen to be specific to a particular place and time and therefore potentially not easily transferable elsewhere.

There is no denying the cultural context. The organizational culture of “family” as proposed by Mintzberg is recognizable in Singapore – organizations are built around one strong leader who is an omnipotent yet benevolent “father figure”. This type of culture is certainly transferable in Asia being seen in, for example, China and Indonesia, but is not as easy to apply in other national cultures, esp. Western cultures. The “family” culture works “well” where there is low uncertainty avoidance, i.e. the individuals are comfortable with risk and uncertainty; and where there is high power distance, i.e. the individuals are comfortable with an unequal distribution of power. The way of executing a strategy is therefore going to be dependent on the cultural context. So whilst the Singapore strategic success might be transferrable to other Asian nations, it might not be transferable elsewhere.