The move from being a hands-on leader to a more strategic leader is a challenge we all face in our leadership journey.
You got promoted because you were very good at the work. But over time, although your role expands and maybe the organisation changes around you, you find that you are still solving other people's problems and doing more of the operational work than you really should be. Meanwhile, your boss tells you airily that you should "be more strategic", without ever spelling out what that means in practice.
So what should you do?
I have written previously about some of the practices that can help you build strategic thinking. But what I didn't mention in that piece is that in order to develop a more strategic approach we need to be able to distinguish between getting better at what we already do and changing the way we see what we do and the context in which we do it.
Grasping this distinction will open up the route to a more strategic way of leading for you. This is quite advanced stuff, but it is also really interesting, so I hope you'll join me on this journey.
My former tutor, Michael Cavanagh, has a way of explaining this that I have always found very useful, and it is the starting point for this series.
Why more skills will only take you so far
Cavanagh draws on the work of Jean Piaget to describe two different ways we respond to new challenges (Cavanagh, 2013):
Horizontal development or assimilation
This is when we add (or assimilate) new skills, techniques and knowledge that fit with the way we already understand the world. It is what we are looking for when we ask "how do I do X?" This kind of development can happen fairly quickly, and you can see the results.
Vertical development or accommodation
This is when we change the way we see the world so that we are better able to understand new information or meet new challenges we face. We change our ways of thinking to accommodate what is in front of us. As Cavanagh puts it, "we don't just know more, we know differently." This happens much more slowly, and usually in stages.
As your leadership role becomes more challenging, fewer of the problems that come to you can be solved with just more skill or expertise. They involve competing priorities, multiple variables and much more uncertainty. This is the shift from the complicated to the complex domain and is why smart leaders can often get stuck. Dealing well with complexity requires the ability to take a more nuanced perspective and this comes when we learn to change our way of thinking to accommodate the challenges we have.
Most leadership training is about learning new skills, so it is essentially horizontal (Cook-Greuter, 2004). But the move from hands-on to strategic leadership is mostly a matter of vertical development. This is why it is sometimes hard to know what being more strategic means, and why you can't just learn it and become more strategic overnight.
Work out your way of seeing the world
David Rooke and Bill Torbert spent around 25 years assessing how managers make sense of the world around them. They called these ways of making sense "action logics" and identified seven of them (Rooke & Torbert, 2005). Five are especially relevant here:
Diplomats avoid overt conflict because they want to belong. They obey group norms, rarely rock the boat and are good at bringing people together.
Experts lead through their own knowledge and skill. They are often excellent individual contributors, but they can find it hard to accept views that differ from their own.
Achievers deliver results through their team and through existing ways of doing things. They have a more complex understanding of the world than Experts and Diplomats and are sensitive to the value of relationships and influencing as means of achieving goals.
Individualists are more aware of how their own way of seeing things shapes what they do, and are more comfortable with competing views. They often ignore rules, which annoys others, but they see creativity and progress in the tensions that may arise between values and actions.
Strategists see the organisation as a system. They can hold competing perspectives at the same time and work with the tensions between them, with an eye on the long term as well as the short term.
In Rooke and Torbert's research, Experts were the largest single group of managers and Strategists were a small minority. Leaders at the earlier action logics, including Experts, were associated with below-average organisational performance.
Rooke and Torbert make it very clear that action logics are not judgements and are not fixed. They are developmental stages and leaders who actively work at their own development can move on to later ones.
Expect it to feel harder before it gets easier
Most of us, when we are struggling with the idea that we 'need to become more strategic', are in the process of developing from Experts to Achievers and from Achievers to Individualists.
According to Cavanagh, vertical development tends to happen in stages, and each stage is often preceded by a period of confusion and lower performance, as the old way of seeing stops working before a new one is in place (Cavanagh, 2013). He also suggests that tightly defined SMART goals can get in the way at this point, because these transitional stages involve a lot of experimenting and exploring.
Other researchers describe the same kind of shift. Michael Watkins talks about leaders having to move from bricklayer to architect (Watkins, 2012), and Mallaby and colleagues found that new general managers had to learn to "let go of control while maintaining ownership" (Mallaby et al., 2017).
So, if you are moving into a bigger role and you feel less sure of yourself than you used to, it may well be a sign that you are developing.
Four ways to start making the shift
Vertical development takes time, self-reflection and intention, and nobody can bring it about but you. But here are some things that will help get you started.
1. Notice the questions you are asking
Horizontal questions usually start with "How do I...?"
More strategic questions sound like "What is going on here that we haven't thought about?", "What assumptions are we making?", "What patterns can we observe and what do they mean?" and "Who sees this differently, and why?"
For example, "How do I get this project back on track?" is a perfectly reasonable question. But you might learn a lot more by asking "What keeps knocking this project off track, and how do the other teams involved see it?"
Pick one problem you are dealing with now and try reframing the questions you are asking about it.
2. Look at where your week goes
Look back at last week's diary and mark the time you spent being the expert: fixing things, checking work, sitting in on meetings you didn't need to attend, or answering questions your team could have answered.
Of course, some of that will have been necessary. But if it adds up to most of your week, you are probably still leading mainly from your expertise. There is more on getting your strategic thinking time back here.
3. Look for views that differ from yours
Vertical development tends to be prompted by situations your current way of thinking can't easily handle. Getting other people's perspectives in these situations helps you break through the limitations of your current ways of thinking (Cavanagh, 2013).
So, before your next significant decision or when you are struggling with how to resolve something, talk to a couple of people who are likely to see it differently from you. That might be somebody in another team or somebody more junior. Ask them what they see that you might be missing. We'll look at this in much more detail later in the series.
4. Find somebody to help you make sense of it
Stretching experiences are important, but you also need help making sense of them. As I mentioned when I wrote about strategic thinking practices, the research on expert strategic thinkers points to the value of engaging with others who challenge their thinking, and a good coach or mentor can do this for you.
The map for the rest of this series
Next, we'll look more closely at some of the things we can do to make active progress in our development. We'll then look at Michael Cavanagh's four factor leadership model, which I believe is a way to leverage and enhance our vertical development, as well as being an effective way of leading well in complex organisations (Cavanagh, 2013).
Why this matters
Most of us are promoted for being good at the work, so it is natural to keep reaching for the thing that has always worked for us. But as your role grows, being the expert will only take you so far. Enhancing the way that you see the problems that come to you is what allows you to step back and spend your own time on the things that only you can do.
So, this week, notice the questions you are asking, and try asking different ones.
That is where the change starts to happen.
If you are making this move at the moment, hit reply and tell me which part of it you are finding hardest. I'll try to cover it in the rest of the series.
References
Cavanagh, M. J. (2013). The coaching engagement in the twenty-first century: New paradigms for complex times. In S. David, D. Clutterbuck & D. Megginson (Eds.), Beyond goals: Effective strategies for coaching and mentoring (pp. 151–183). Gower.
Cook-Greuter, S. R. (2004). Making the case for a developmental perspective. Industrial and Commercial Training, 36(7), 275–281.
Mallaby, S. J., Price, G., & Hofmeyr, K. (2017). The transition to general management in South Africa. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 15, a846.
Rooke, D., & Torbert, W. R. (2005). Seven transformations of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 83(4), 66–76.
Watkins, M. D. (2012). How managers become leaders: The seven seismic shifts of perspective and responsibility. Harvard Business Review, 90(6), 64–72.
More leadership inspiration
What Next?
All of my posts for new leaders are here.
How I can help you
Coaching. If your role is growing and you are finding it hard to let go of the hands-on work and lead more strategically, I can help. Working out what is keeping you in the detail, and what to do about it, is exactly the kind of thing that is helpful to talk through with somebody. There are more details here.