To be a truly effective manager, you must develop skills in strategic thinking. And what exactly is strategic thinking? Strategic thinking is top-down, big-picture thinking, which essentially requires you to envision the ideal outcome for your business. That vision sets the direction for the organisation. It also serves as a tool to help you confront change, and plan for and make transitions.

However, strategic thinking demands more than simply forming grand visions in your mind. You must also take steps to turn it into reality by communicating it to your people, inspiring them to take your dream aboard and make it theirs, and developing cohesive teams that will give form to the ephemeral. The more the vision of the intended future can be stated in concrete terms with quantitative descriptors, the more it will communicate to, and energise, the organisation’s employees and stakeholders to make that vision their own. The more clearly the stakeholders can see themselves operating in shared-value activities, the more the vision will become reality.
CREATING YOUR VISION:
Set aside a day, or a couple of half days, to spend on planning, with your key management team, or alone if yours is a one-person business. Work in a comfortable, informal environment and dress casually.
Step One: Evaluate
Look at:
  •  What is important to you
  •  Where you are going
  •  What your business is all about
  •  Your business’s prime purpose.
Now, identify six key areas, or organisational values, that are crucial to your business, eg customers, employees, brand, image, cash flow, growth, expansion, productivity, premises and so on.
Once you have decided the key organisational values, write them down.
Working through the list, develop a crystal-clear vision of where you want to go with each one. What is possible? What does it look like when you are living up to your highest expectations? Write down what it looks like, and what it feels like, to have reached the point in each key area where you are happy with the results. This is your picture, your vision of the future of your organisation - as you want it to be. This vision allows you to set goals in the direction of your preferred future. It charges you with energy, motivation, purpose and direction.
Starting with a clear vision of what is possible will assist you in communicating your vision to the stakeholders in your business: these are the people who will help your vision become your destination.

Step Two: Your Current Reality
Step two requires you to identify the current reality of the business and isolate the areas of greatest need. To do this, have each member of your team rate the present performance of each of the organisational value areas you selected compared to your vision of your preferred future. Use a scale of one to ten (ten is excellent, one is poor).

Step Three: Establish Priorities
Use the completed ratings to select one or two areas holding the greatest opportunity for an improvement that will translate into significant results during the coming year.

Step Four: Develop an Action Plan
Brainstorm all the possible actions that will help move you closer to your vision in those one or two areas on which you have chosen to work this year. Call in all your creativity: try to move away from the same old solutions you’ve always used.
Allocate responsibilities to team members and establish time lines.

Step Five: Implementation
Have each person prepare a plan for implementing the action items.
Review progress periodically, perhaps once or twice a month.
Be sure to celebrate your progress and your successes as you go through the year.

BUILDING STRONG LEADERSHIP SKILLS AND TEAMS
Because strong leadership skills and strong teams are fundamental for transforming your vision into reality, here are the keys to help you build both:

Leadership Keys
When John F. Kennedy established the objective that the USA would put a man on the moon within the decade, he inspired and led the American people. He did not design and make the spaceships, or train the astronauts, or attend to any of the millions of tiny details that turned the vision into fact. JFK communicated his vision, the American population embraced it, and teams of people in government departments, defence organisations and the private sector went to work to transform that vision into reality. 

Great leaders like JFK have one common characteristic: the ability to communicate their vision with such clarity and passion that many are moved to follow. The same characteristic marks all successful leaders, including heads of business.
Leadership, says Warren Bennis in his book Managing People Is Like Herding Cats, is the factor that empowers the workforce and ultimately determines whether the organisation succeeds or fails. True leaders are more than merely good managers: they are the social architects of the organisations who influence the culture, and create and maintain values.
In researching his book, Bennis spent considerable time with ninety top CEOs in the USA, a diverse group that included only a handful who could be described as the quintessential ‘charismatic’ leader. Bennis ultimately identified four areas of competence shared by this prestigious group (of which six were women). These were:
 Management of attention
 Management of meaning
 Management of trust
 Management of self

Management of Attention:
Bennis notes that one of the most apparent traits in his group is their ability to draw others to them, not because they have a vision, a dream or a set of intentions, but because they communicate an extraordinary focus of commitment, which attracts people to them. Someone described one of the leaders as a person who made people want to join him, that he ‘enrols them in his vision’. Bennis explains that this is not in the mystical or religious sense, but in the sense of outcome, goal or direction. “Leaders…manage attention through a compelling vision that brings others to a place they have not been before.”

Management of Meaning:
In order to align people to vision, leaders must communicate their vision. Using word, metaphor or model, leaders have the ability to make ideas tangible and real to others, sifting through many organisational layers, crossing vast distances, even ‘jamming the signals’ of special interest groups and opponents.
Bennis says that not all the leaders in his group are word masters; instead, they get people to understand and support their goals in a variety of ways. “The ability to manage attention and meaning comes from the whole person,” says Bennis. “It is not enough to use the right buzzword…or to hire a public relations person to write speeches.”

Management of Trust:
When Bennis talked to board members and staff about his group of leaders, he found that certain phrases popped up consistently, such as: “Whether you like it or not, you always know where she is coming from, what she stands for.” 
Trust is fundamental to all organisations. The main determinant of trust is reliability, or constancy, as Bennis calls it. He cites a recent study that showed people would much rather follow others they can count on, even when they disagree with their viewpoint, than follow people they agree with but who shift positions freely. “I cannot emphasise enough the significance of constancy and focus,” he stresses.

Management of Self:
This fourth leadership competency boils down to knowing your skills, and deploying them effectively. Leaders know themselves, know how to nurture their strengths and weaknesses.
The group was not acquainted with the concept of failure: what most people would term failure, they call ‘a mistake’, or some other word from a list of twenty synonyms that included flop, error, bungle, foul-up. These CEOs learn from their mistakes, and move on. Some actually relish their mistakes: one group member declared that if she has a knack for leadership, it’s her capacity to make as many mistakes as quickly as possible and thus get them out of the way!

Leaders and managers who don’t manage themselves can do more harm than good, says Bennis. “Like incompetent doctors, incompetent managers can make life worse, make people sicker and less vital. Some managers give themselves heart attacks and nervous breakdowns; still worse, many are ‘carriers’ causing their employees to be ill.”

Bennis concludes his analysis of leadership by saying that it can be felt throughout the organisation, that it gives pace and energy to the work and empowers the workforce. “Empowerment is the collective effect of leadership. In organisations with effective leaders, empowerment is most evident in four themes.”
These are:
 People feel significant. Every employee believes that they are making a contribution to the success of the business.
 Learning and competence matter. Leaders value these attributes; so do the people who work for the leaders.
 Work is exciting. Where leadership is strong, work is challenging, fascinating, stimulating and fun.
 People are part of a community. A unity, a strong sense of family, of teamwork exists where there is leadership.

TEAMWORK KEYS
The most effective teams contain a mixture of personalities and recognisable skills. You want people who are prolific generators of ideas, those who put ideas into practice, and others who are completers/finishers, delivering the end result on time. You need (although you many not want!) a nitpicker or challenger who relishes playing devil’s advocate. You want someone with the ability to develop contacts, someone else with the ability to move decision making forward.

However, important as these individual characteristics are, there is one underlying factor common to great teams, says Jean Cavill, author of the book Improve Your Management Skills. Some years ago an international management consultancy spent considerable time and money researching the question. The result? The vital factor proved to be trust, which underscores Warren Bennis’s discovery of the importance of trust in leadership.

The primary hallmark of a good team is the level of trust that exists between members: they rely on each other, and are always willing to share information and feelings, comfortable that these things will be used for the good of the team as a whole, and also for the individual members.

A vital function of the team leader is to cultivate an environment that fosters trust. Here are some guidelines:
  •  Don’t try to rush the trust-building process: be patient and give team members time to establish how far they can trust fellow members not to hurt or betray them. Remember that most people harbour fears of their own vulnerability.
  •  As an effective leader, you must demonstrate that you trust your team members. Most people will respond to a demonstration of trust by others, reciprocating by becoming more open and trusting themselves.
  •  Many people are reluctant to share personal information, fearing it will make them vulnerable. If you want others to be open, you must lead by example. Openly recognise your weaknesses and fears; celebrate your strengths and aspirations; admit your mistakes. When team members see you being open and honest, they are much more likely to open up.
  •  Some of your team members may be afraid to reveal their fears and shortcomings to you and fellow team members, fearing that they will be ridiculed. Make it clear to team members, by word and deed, that risk taking and normal human fallibility will not be punished.
  •  Be generous with praise when it’s earned, and give feedback as a gift for growth, as many people can only develop if they are given timely information about how you and other team members perceive their actions. Providing open, honest and constructive feedback is an extremely effective way of generating trust between you and your staff, even more so if you encourage feedback on your own performance. You may not agree with what fellow team members are saying, but listen and don’t feel compelled to justify your actions or behaviour.
  •  Deal openly with hidden agendas when you become aware of them. Say something like ‘I sense you have reservations about implementing this procedure. It may be my imagination, but I want to check it out with you.’
  •  Once trust is broken, it will never return to the same level as before, no matter how much effort is put into rebuilding attempts, so be scrupulous in respecting confidential information.  
Originally published in Her Business magazine