by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“A Strategic Framework will give you all the fundamentals that enable you to build momentum and success, as opposed to Strategic Plans which mistakenly aim to drive growth by the numbers.”

 Are you familiar with utilizing a Strategic Frame-work as an alternative to a Strategic Plan? The former has several advantages over the latter; not least that Strategic Plans tend to be rather static in nature. This could mean them being outdated the moment they’re launched. Strategic Frameworks, on the other hand, are built on fundamental components and forces that shift with current dynamics; therefore they readily adjust to new situations going forward. They are also not solely built on numbers.

Numbers can be useful outcome measures, although invariably are not your primary driving force. If you assemble the right fundamentals and build upon them in the right way, then your desired numbers will usually be attained, and more besides.

Take the example of a soccer/football team: If you have the right coach, with the right combination of players – who are highly skilled, motivated and educated in the sport – and with scouts that monitor your competitors’ teams; then, with an enlightened leadership team in place, you’re well positioned to win. These fundamental factors are more important than the final score line, since you only need one more goal than your competitors to succeed, anyway. A pure focus on stats will cast your team members more as mercenary machines rather than humans.

Besides, a largely numbers approach encourages managers to be slave-drivers and lacking in humanity. The best coaches/leaders are inspired humans, not pure numbers chasers. Consequently, our potential World Leadership Crisis, Start-up Venture Team (WLC-SVT) will likely spend at least a day together to build a Strategic Framework that consists of a compelling Vision-Purpose, pinpoints key Knowledge requirements, determines vital Resources needed, and clarifies desired Outcomes – including team member aspirations as well as “ownership” numbers.

A successful outcome for our WLC initiative would be where World and National Leadership Academies are able to be assembled, along with requisite valuable faculty and leadership “students,’ and have the financial-backing to enable their Vision to endure for many years to come. (NOTE: You can always contact this author, if you wish to know more about how to build effective Strategic Frameworks, which are markedly different and better than developing Strategic Plans.)

An exercise like this done well, with the background support of a professional facilitator, will enable any prior proposed Strategic Leader- cum Visionist to bring his/her team fully on board through collective thought-processes. From there they can prioritize their conclusions, in terms of near-term execution/implementation, mid-term positioning-preparing for next moves, and longer-term thinking-about future moves– as per our typical three-phase Strategic Streaming approach. Although all three factors will be pursued concurrently, they should be addressed as discrete components unto themselves. Naturally the greatest amount of time will be devoted to execution, although due amounts of time will also be spent on the other two components.

This framework can then provide the Strategist team with something specific and concrete to share with likely future collaborators – see prior Phase 4 – in order to secure their wholehearted support. Making potential outside collaborators/customers aware of a coherent gameplan goes a long way toward securing their backing. Once the SVT’s strategic framework is ready for collaborator consumption, after more than one likely round of Strategic team review, the team can then be readied to kick-start their strategy, and primed to forge ahead. It will also again prudently allow them to celebrate completion of this future start-up milestone.

As the team’s various implementation initiatives are set underway, in due course, by way of three pairs out of six Strategists; they will then move toward Phases 1B –5B of enlightened leadership’s (EL’s) next growth cycle. This cyclical activity will help generate ongoing momentum; somewhat slowly at the outset, although picking-up speed toward an optimal growth pace. (NOTE: Typical milestones will act as management checkpoints to determine that optimum – not absolute – progress is being made. Too often, highly managed enterprises opt for breakneck growth and everyone steadily burns out in a way that undermines their ongoing growth prospects. That burnout also encourages talented people to leave and take their skills and knowhow elsewhere.)

Naturally this can only occur once that all-important Strategist-Catalyst Leader-cum-Visionist is found for our World Leadership Crisis initiative. Once the team eventually complete its first cycle (1A-5A), then it canl pursue the next new cycle, 1B-5B. It can then seamlessly enter into cycle 1C-5C, and so on. These ongoing cycles will be discussed in our next related article: Phases 1B-5B:“Gearing up for Fundraising, Initial Public Presentation Forums and Assembling Faculty/”Leadership-Student” Recruitment Teams.”