Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization's Enduring Success

The book written by Richard Hughes and Katherine Colarelli continues with the tradition of the Center for Creative Leadership of producing tools and information based on solid research and experience. The book proposes a model of strategic leadership composed of three large competency clusters: strategic thinking, strategic acting and strategic influencing and then it explains and analyze each of these clusters, providing, not only a theoretical explanation of the different skills but also examples, tools and activities to develop them.

Before I bought this book I did not realize that it is such a very useful resource. If you are looking for a resource to inspire your startegic leadership, it is the right one. I really like to have more books from CCL :-).

Most of the publications that come out of CCL (or Center for Creative Leadership), which I have acquired for my personal library, are seemingly well-supported by research findings & concisely written by the respective authors, who apparently hold impeccable track records in their fields. This particular book is one of them. (CCL has earned its #1 Rank in Leadership Education by Business Week). My primary interest in strategic leadership stems from my relentless search for better understanding of the thinking processes that go inside the heads of leaders. To be more precise, the strategy formulation processes! This has been by burning passion for more than two decades. In this book, the authors have artfully as well as logically demonstrated how readers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive & systematic approach: - strategic thinking (Chapter 2); - strategic acting (Chapter 3); - strategic influencing (Chapter 4); These serve as the synergistic driving forces. In the authors' own words: Driving strategy as a learning process. (I am actually quite tempted to use the term, `syn-vergent' instead of `synergistic' [driving forces] as the former term was originally coined by Michael Gelb, in Thinking for a Change, which means `the art of balancing convergent and divergent thinking modes, logic and imagination, reason and intuition.' In the current book under review, the authors contend that strategic thinking engages the heart as well as the head.) With an excellent introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 6 shows how readers can apply the above approach in the broader organizational context. Chapter 7 sums up the book: Becoming a Strategic Leader, using surfing as a metaphorical platform (I like it!) - keeping your balance while learning the best path to follow amid constantly changing conditions. Throughout the book, the authors discuss in depth the specific competencies & perspectives related to each of the above driving forces, as well as their interdependency in producing a more wholistic (or more appropriately, `syn-vergent', as explained above) & meaningful strategy. In conclusion as a whole from the standpoint of reader friendliness & action-packed learning, I rate this wonderful book a 5. So, readers, please add this book to your Strategic Thinker's Bookshelf. Attention Readers: To complement as well as to reinforce your understanding of Chapter 2 of this book, please read `Choosing the Future: The Power of Strategic Thinking', by Stuart Wells.

Becoming a Strategic Leader is a focused and wonderfully written work for those who believe in approaching challenges in a strategic way. The authors, trainers and researchers at the internationally acclaimed Center for Creative Leadership (www.ccl.org), use a framework familiar to strategic planning processes to improve the likelihood of obtaining results in enhancing one's leadership effectiveness. The content is solid and full of real life examples and applications. This book will appeal to those who are drawn to a logical approach to problem solving but should also engage the heart of others seeking to add structure to their own development or that of their teams. If you liked Execution, and Good to Great, you should like this as well. It is well worth a look. Dr. Christopher Evans www.christopherevans.org