The 10 important areas of mastery for successful leadership 

Arguably the most important function that a leader must play is to define the organisational strategy in a way that enables the business to compete successfully.  To do so, it will leverage its internal capabilities to provide products and/or services that customers want and will pay for.

Crafting organisational strategy is a complex porcess.  There is no manual that informs leaders about the best course of action.  It requires a deep understanding of how to sense changes in the context and ready the organisation so that it is at the cause of change, not the effect of it.

Strategy is an interesting component of business because its usefulness increass with the maturity of an organisaiton.  In start-up, strategy can play a less significant role.  As the business matures, the important of strategy magnifies, ensuring that the business is positioned to compete successfully.  The rising importance of strategy may signal one reason the high failure rate of start-ups within just a few years.

Now that the strategic planning process is in hand, what follows is the requirement to resource the organisation so that the strategic plan can be achieved.  As a start, this means ensuring that people are accountable for delivering against the strategy, but equally that strategic delivery does not become the 'second job' for team members.  Overloading people with new tasks is a recipe for strategic under-performance.

At the next level, resourcing may require building or buying the capabilities the organisation requires to successfully deliver on the strategy.  This may require new hires and the requisite onboarding and/ore the training of people and teams within the organisation to meet the new needs.  

From the viewpoint of a start-up, resourcing may entail seed funding or growth investments.

Irrespective of the state of maturity of the organisation, a leader's role is to ensure that the organisation is sufficiently resourced so that the strategic objectives are achieved.

Resourcing an organisation is balanced by the obligation of a leader to ensure its sustainability.  This requires a careful balancing between what a company needs today versus what it needs to keep aside for tomorrow.

These decisions require careful financial analysis and economic insight and an awareness that not everything can be anticipated.  COVID-19 is a prime example of so-called Black Swan events. 

Interlinked with strategic responsibility, it is also the role of leaders to ensure that the strategy of the business is sound enough for the business to survive into the future.  Rather than watching market shifts, and doing nothing about it, competent leaders ensure that organisations shift and even pivot to remain relevant.

The organisational graveyard is littered with examples, which include Kodak, Blockbuster, Blackberry, Nokia and many others.  These weren't the first and will not be the last.

Leaders need to make good decisions, often with incomplete and perhaps even partially accurate information.  Things change quickly and the speed to decision-making needs to keep pace.

If we are making decisions based exclusively on experience, we are likely to repeat mistakes that have been made in the past.  Decision-making in today's age encompasses the ability to gather information quickly, leverage a network of advistors and layer experience on top when deciding on the best course of action.

Of equal importance is that, when evidence indicates that the decision was not the best one, willingness and ability to change must be apparent.  Stubbornly sticking to a decisions that does not deliver results is a slippery slop to irrelevance and joining the graveyard of organisations who no longer exist.

Businesses are a network of people who deliver projects, either as teams or via cross-functional collaboration.  Knowing how to form, nurture and enable high-performance in these teams is a key leadership skill.

Our learning journeys as we enter into the business world are generally focused on mastering our function, whether this be marketing, operations, engineering, finance, etc.  Very few leaders have actively taken the time to understand how to form a team and enable teams to deliver effective, high-quality outputs, whilst managing team dynamics and growing leaders through the process.

I assert that leaders must invest as much time learning leadership as they have their technical trade.  Only then will they develop the competencies needed to be successful in their leadership roles.

Organisations cannot stand still.  Doing so enables their competition to play catch up and perhaps even eat their lunch.  Continuous improvement therefore needs to form part of the organisational culture that becomes embedded into the way the organisation does things.  

Post-project reviews, and even pre-project think tanks, need to become embedded into the ways of working, and importantly, the learnings extracted from these processes need to be designed into the enhanced working approach,.

At an overlal business level, leaders must review the business portfolio and build a mosaic of operations that are complementary and inter-disciplinary.

Interlinked with sustainability, leaders must focus on growing people within an organisation.  If you have to go outside your organisation to fill leadership roles, then you are failing to build pipeline and succession.  Hiring externally not only drives up costs, but initially can slow down performance whilst the new incumbant onboards and finds their way.

At the same time that you are growing your followers, you must be on an accelerated growth track yourself.  If you are not learning at a rate faster than things are changing around you, you will soon lack relevance and begin to clog the pipeline.  The consequence is that good people will leave your organisation in search of growth opportunities.

Interlinked with the requirement to grow people is the need to nurture individuals.  Your role as a leader is to understand the aspirations of each person in your team and to help them carry awareness of their strengths and development areas.

As a leader, your role is to craft opportunities for your people to learn and grow by giving them exposure to projects or opportunities that will create stretch and help them consciously close their technical and leadership gaps.

This aspect of leadership is also about getting to know your people as human beings, understanding their hopes and fears and supporting them through their bad days, whilst celebrating their good ones.  It's knowing them as people, with husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, children and fur kids and all that makes up their world outside of the workplace.

As a leader, you take full accountability for everything that takes place in your business, or business unit.  Things that happen may not be your fault, but they are your responsiblity.

Becoming a leader demands an understanding that you can delegate responsibility and hold people accountable for their work, but at the end of the day, the accountability rests soley with you.  If the results are not forthcoming from your business or business unit, that is your challenge to resolve.

As a leader, your conduct needs to be above reproach.  With culture being set by leadership, followers will take on the prevailing tone and traits.  You need to recognise that people watch you closer than you may think and your actions have ripples far beyond what you may initially appreciate.

Leadership is a responsibility that is not for the faint-hearted.  Being mindful of your conduct and approach is an essential component of competent leadership.