Becoming A Strategic Leader: Your Role In Your Organization's Enduring Success

by Richard L. Hughes

Today’s organizations face difficult challenges in order to remain competitive—the quickening pace of change, increasing uncertainty, growing ambiguity, and complexity. To meet these challenges, organizations must broaden the scope of leadership responsibility for strategic leadership and engage more people in the process of leadership. In Becoming a Strategic Leader Rich Hughes and Kate Beatty from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) offer executives and managers a handbook for implementing a strategic leadership process that reaches leaders at all levels of organizations. Based on CCL’s  successful Developing the Strategic Leader Program, this book outlines the framework of strategic leadership and contains practical suggestions on how to develop the individual, team, and organizational skills needed for institutions to become more adaptable, flexible, and resilient. The authors also show how individual managers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive and systemic approach—thinking, acting, and influencing.

Genres: Leadership, Nonfiction, Management

268 pages, Hardcover

First published February 16, 2005

Reviews

[Garland Vance · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was awful. The only reason I give it two stars is because it took me so long to read it (over 2 months), which might have affected how much I got out of it. If I had read it straight through, I'm pretty sure I would give it 1 star.

The book gave no insight on becoming a strategic leader. Rather, it felt like a compilation of every basic leadership idea and called it "strategic leadership."

Furthermore, they should have named the book, "Becoming a Strategic Business Leader," as that is the only type of leadership that they dealt with. There is nothing wrong with this; the authors simply should have called it what it is.

Don't bother with this one.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few good ideas but overall I didn't find anything earth-shattering. Mostly common sense.

[Joshua Bowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is predicated on the fact that I’m a military tactical-level leader with only tactical-level experience.
Bottom line: it’s a good book as an introduction to the concept of strategic-level thinking, operations, and leadership.
It’s a long read and often seems repetitive or unnecessary at times. However, looking back, I feel it needs to be to try and capture the complete idea of “being strategic.”
There’s some absolute gold in this book, as well as some parts that I felt did nothing for me.
Overall, I’m glad I read the book and would recommend it as an introduction to the idea of working at the strategic-level of an organization.

[Timothy Koller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well substantiated information. Helpful visuals to use when diagnosing leadership and organizational problems. This attempts a comprehensive approach to leadership, something most leadership authors do not care to attempt. It an academic book, so I suspect many people will struggle to appreciate it. It is not an easy book to read, and it is easy to get lost in the midst of all the concepts swirling about. But it a helpful resource, particularly in the final chapter with the assessment on Strategic Leadership Practices Inventory.

[Justin Wilkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leadership material is hard for me, but this book was easier than some. It certainly helped me to think differently, as leadership is not all bout influence and vision. This concepts can become enigmatic and float away from relevance, but the authors here do a wonderful job of continually making strategy understandable and practical, both individually and within a team. Certainly worth the read for the nuanced mindset that one gets in leadership AND management.

[Jason Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a nice job making the idea of acting strategically in a leadership context concrete. It draws a clear distinction between the related disciplines of strategic thinking, strategic acting, strategic influence. It's a pretty dense read, one that many middle managers and executive will want to keep on their bookshelf as a reference.

[Alireza Hejazi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The focus of the book is clear: “Developing the strategic leadership of individual executives and their teams.”

[Dr Ariel Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, practical, easy to read for a textbook and clearly explains the importance of viewing leadership as a strategic process.

[Marcus Ampadu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitive textbook for SLM

Like the emphasis on strategic thinking, action, influencing; generally, the scenario planning components. Don't the inadequate focus on VUCA Africa.

[Emma Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Common sense driven strategic leadership, some good company examples that illustrate some of the principles.

[Vkarthik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good book for people transitioning to a strategic role, for the first time. It gives insignts into how a strategic role is different from a managerial role but at the same time they have to go hand in hand.

The ideas listed are not anything new, but its application has been explained well.

[Ashley Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read on the details of strategic leadership!