Pick Your Battles

Great leaders have to be great strategists.  Failure to develop and execute an effective strategy will land you in hot water.  Sometimes it lands you in a sea of crude oil.  British Petroleum’s  colossal failure to cap a leaking oil well 5,000 feet below the water’s surface in the Gulf of Mexico is probably more about corporate greed than anything.  In the end though, it is also about a poor strategy.  In their drilling permit applications they alleged they had the capacity to cap, contain and manage an oil spill at that depth with minimal or no environmental impact.  Unfortunately their strategy to accomplish this appears to have been completely bogus.  It isn’t that their strategy was weak; more like non-existent.  We can only hope this failure will bankrupt BP and teach other oil companies a lesson.

The relationship between leadership and strategy can be elusive.  Organizations often spend an inordinate amount of time with strategic planning only to find external forces have changed the environment or unanticipated events have altered the landscape.  Strategic planning is nothing more than trying to predict the future, which has proven time and time again to be difficult.  Nevertheless, it is foolish not to look ahead and develop plans to guide both yourself and your organization.  A short-sighted approach will inevitably lead to failure.  Successful leaders need to be forward-thinking; they need to see the potential challenges and opportunities that lay ahead.

Strategy and tactics have long been a part of military training and business colleges.  The Art of War is a popular read for military strategists and MBA students alike.  We are all familiar with the phrase, “pick your battles”, but it was Sun Tzu who put it more eloquently when he wrote, “The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” The lesson here is for leaders to strategically pick the battles they can win while avoiding those they cannot.

This is good advice for leaders in any organization and it is congruent with Fiedler’s contingency model of leadership.  Fiedler basically asserts that successful leaders know their strengths and align those strengths with the right opportunities.  When it comes to leadership and strategy, have a plan that works and be careful to avoid those battles that you cannot win.  Otherwise you could end up the poster boy for environmental disaster.