This document contains information from a website (www.mba-asap.com) on leadership, strategy, communication, and managing organizations. It includes definitions of leadership, summaries of books and ideas from thought leaders, and tips for strategic thinking, planning, communication and managing strategy implementation. Sections discuss hedgehog vs fox thinkers, principles of negotiation, translating vision into action, and maintaining momentum to achieve strategic goals through active management.

1. Leadership
Strategy and Communication
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2. Managing and Leading
People and Organizations
• This presentation is
based on my book
Managing and Leading
People and Organizations
• Paperback and Kindle
version available at
Amazon.
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3. MBA ASAP
• Check out my website
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more business skills
information and
materials
• Sign up for my
newsletter
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4. Leadership
A process of social
influence in which one
person can enlist the
aid and support of
others in the
accomplishment of a
common task
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5. The Leadership Challenge
“All enterprises or
projects, big or small,
begin in the mind's eye;
they begin with
imagination and with the
belief that what is merely
an image can one day be
made real.”
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6. Strategic Thinking
• Leaders, similar to great
athletes, must
simultaneously play the
game and observe it as
a whole.
• Keep perspective and
see the big picture –
not get lost in the
action.
• Vision and a sense of
the future
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7. Warren Bennis
• American scholar,
organizational consultant
and author, widely
regarded as a pioneer of
the contemporary field of
Leadership studies
• Research in the 1960s
anticipated less
hierarchical, more flat
and adaptive institutions,
private and public
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8. In Today’s World…
• Flatter organizations
• Innovation
• Internet
• Networks
• To accomplish our work
and meet our needs:
• Rely on dozens, hundreds,
thousands of individuals
and organizations over
whom we exercise no
direct control
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9. To Get What We Want…
• We are compelled to
Negotiate.
• Pyramids of power are
shifting into networks of
negotiation.
• Communications
revolution
• Global “virtual”
organizations
• Cross-cultural
transactions
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10. Negotiating Revolution
• From Adversarial to
Cooperative
• From specialized to
general methodology
• Wise agreement is
better for both sides
than the alternative.
• Principled Negotiation
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11. Principled Negotiation
• Negotiation based on a
joint search for mutual
gains and legitimate
standards.
• Process to find
opportunities and
search for solutions that
are better for both
sides.
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12. 对事不对人
• Means when you are dealing with a problem
or criticize something, try to focus on the
problem itself while not being affected by the
people who is dealing with or caused the
problem
• Separate the people from the problem.
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13. Leadership and Management
• As the world changes,
Negotiation is becoming
the primary form of
decision-making.
– John Naisbitt and
Patricia Aburdene
– Co-authors of
Megatrends 2000
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14. Warren Bennis on Leadership
• Create a compelling vision,
one that takes people to a
new place, and then translate
that vision into a reality.
• Becoming a leader is
synonymous with becoming
yourself. It is precisely that
simple, and it is also that
difficult.
• People who cannot invent
and reinvent themselves must
be content with borrowed
postures, secondhand ideas,
fitting in instead of standing
out.
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15. Leadership vs. Management
• The manager asks how
and when; the leader
asks what and why.
• The manager accepts
the status quo; the
leader challenges it.
• The manager has his
eye on the bottom line;
the leader has his eye
on the horizon.
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16. Mindset
Strategic thinking requires a
mindset – a way of thinking
or intellectual process that
• accepts change,
• analyzes the causes and
outcomes of change,
• attempts to direct an
organization's future to
capitalize on the
changes.
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17. Be opportunistic
Do what you can, with
what you have, where you
are.
Theodore Roosevelt
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18. Constantly Refine and Update the Vision
• acknowledges the reality of
change,
• questions current
assumptions and activities,
• builds on an understanding
of systems,
• envisions possible futures,
• generates new ideas,
• considers the organizational
fit with the external
environment
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19. Translational Thinking
Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of
opportunity without regard for resources
currently controlled.
Bismarck defined statesmanship as the
art of the possible.
TS Elliot: Between the idea and the act
lies the shadow. The Hollow Men.
Crossing the Chasm book. Geoffrey
Moore
Wayne Gretzky "Skate where the puck is
going, not where it's been"
Timing. The early bird gets the worm, but
the second mouse gets the cheese!
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20. Assessing Change
• Assess the changing
needs of the
organization's
stakeholders and the
changing technological,
social and demographic,
economic,
legislative/political, and
competitive demands of
its world.
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21. 三十年河东，三十年河西
• The Chinese saying "sometimes the river flows
East and sometimes the river flows West" is "三
十年河东，三十年河西".
• It means things change with time and the
situation, someone can not be successful forever
and someone will not be hapless all the time, just
like an English saying "Every dog will have his
day".
• It is not only a metaphor pertaining to one's life,
but also can be used to describe the changes in
larger fields.
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22. www.mba-asap.com

23. Leaders are always questioning:
• “What are we doing now
that we should stop
doing?”
• “What are we not doing
now, but should start
doing?”
• “What are we doing now
that we should continue
to do but perhaps in a
fundamentally different
way?”
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24. These questions are applicable to
everything the organization does
• Products and services,
• Internal processes,
• Policies and procedures,
• Strategies
• Dealing with complexity
and change
• The fit between the
enterprise and the
environment
• Product/market fit
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25. Penetrating Vision
• Examine assumptions,
• Understand systems
and their
interrelationships,
• Develop alternative
scenarios of the future
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26. Forecast
• External technological,
social and demographic
changes, as well as
• Critical changes in the
legislative and political
arenas
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27. Strategic Thinking vs. SMEs
• Strategic thinking is very much a
leadership activity and quite
different from what subject
matter experts do.
• Strategic thinkers specialize in
relationships and context
whereas expert thinkers
specialize in well-defined
disciplines and functions.
• Strategic thinkers act on intuition
and “gut feel” when data is
incomplete – focus on action and
moving forward where as experts
pay rigorous attention to
knowledge, evidence, and data –
focus on understanding.
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28. Philip Tetlock
• American political
scientist and
psychologist
• Fox and Hedgehog
differences
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29. Sir Isaiah Berlin
• British Philosopher
• There are two kinds of
thinkers in the world:
• Hedgehogs: who know
on big thing
• Foxes: who dart from
idea to idea.
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30. Reference
• fragment attributed to
the ancient Greek poet
Archilochus: πόλλ' οἶδ'
ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν
μέγα
• "the fox knows many
things, but the
hedgehog knows one
big thing".
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31. Accuracy in Forecasting
Tetlock draws heavily on
this distinction in his
exploration of the
accuracy of experts and
forecasters in various
fields
– politics
– International affairs
– Economics
in his 2005 book Expert
Political Judgment: How
Good Is It? How Can We
Know?
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32. Studies
• Interviewed hundreds
of experts and asked
them to make
prediction about the
short-term future:
• The next five years
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33. Low Scorers Look Like Hedgehogs
• Thinkers who know ‘one
big thing’ aggressively
extend the explanatory
reach of that one big
thing into new domains.
• When you have a
hammer, everything
looks like a nail
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34. High Scorers: Foxes
• Skeptical of easy historical
analogy
• More probabilistic in the
their thinking
• Comfortable updating
their models
• The more wide ranging
their curiosity, the more
accurate they tended to
be
• Fast updating Foxes
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35. Management of the Strategy
• Strategic thinking is
supported by the
continuous management
of the strategy and
documented through the
periodic process of
strategic planning
• Feedback and
measurement is critical
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36. Guidelines
• Decision consistency is
central to strategy
• When an organization
exhibits a consistent
behavior it has a
strategy
• Low cost provider
• CEO of Southwest
Airlines Herb Keller
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37. Analyzing and understanding the situation
(1) external
environmental
analysis;
(2) internal environmental
analysis;
(3) the development or
refinement of the
organization's
directional strategies.
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38. The Innovator’s Dilemma
• Sometimes the river
flows East and
sometimes the river
flows West.
• Discern the tides
• Go with the flow
• Look for enabling and
converging technologies
and trends
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39. Resources, competencies, and
capabilities of the organization
Strategy is additionally
influenced by the internal
resources, competencies,
and capabilities of the
organization and
represents “what the
organization can do.”
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40. Directional Strategies
Driven by a common
mission, common vision,
and common set of
organizational values and
goals – the directional
strategies
• What the organization
wants to do
• Ability to communicate
it
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41. Implementation
Implementation plans are
made up of strategies
developed in the key areas
that create value for an
organization –
• service delivery
• support activities
Making Strategy Work
Buy-in and Ownership
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42. Leading in a Rapidly Changing
Environment
• It is not the strongest of
the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most
responsive to change.
CHARLES DARWIN
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43. Dealing with rapid, complex, and often
discontinuous change requires leadership
• understand the nature
and implications of
external change,
• the ability to develop
effective strategies that
account for change, and
• the will as well as the
ability to actively
manage the
momentum of the
organization
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44. Strategic Management
• Strategic Thinking
• Strategic Planning
• Business Planning
• Managing Momentum
• Execution of Plan
• Feedback and
Measurement
• Iterate (Rinse and
Repeat)
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45. If you want to predict the future,
create it.
• not simply be responsive
to changes, you must
create the future.
• Health care leaders must
see into the future,
• create new visions for
success, and
• be prepared to make
significant improvements
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46. Making Strategy Work
• Strategy is usually
viewed as an annual
exercise at best, an
event that creates a
‘product,' and not a
process to be used to
actually run the
business
• Disconnect between
Strategy and Tactics
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47. Achieve the organization’s goals
Managing the strategy to
achieve the strategic goals
of the organization
• Eyes on the Prize
• Leadership
• Communicate the goals
and how to get there
• Turnaround or Growth:
getting your people
focused on the Goal
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48. Maintain the Momentum
• the actual work to
accomplish specific
objectives,
• concerns decision-making
processes and their
consequences,
• provides the style and
culture,
• evaluates strategy
performance,
• is a learning process, and
• relies on and initiates new
strategic thinking and new
periodic strategic planning
• Iterative
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49. The Epic Fail
If the strategy is not
actively managed, it will
not happen.
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50. Henry Mintzberg
A key to managing
strategy is the ability to
detect emerging patterns
and help them take shape.
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51. Unrealized Strategy
Rational strategies do not
always work out as
planned..
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52. Emergent Strategy
An organization may end
up with a strategy that
was quite unexpected as a
result of having been
“swept away by events”
(an emergent strategy)
• Be Opportunistic
• Carpe Diem
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53. Learning
Leadership, vision, and
“feeling our way along”
(learning)
• Groping
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54. Reformulating and Groping
• There is a reformulation of the
strategy during implementation as
the organization gains new
information and feeds that
information back to the formulation
process, thus modifying intentions en
route.
• The external environment is in a
period of flux and strategists are
unable to accurately predict
conditions; the organization may
therefore find itself unable to
respond appropriately to a powerful
external momentum.
• Organizations in the external
environment implementing their own
strategies may block a strategic
initiative, forcing the activation of a
contingency strategy or a period of
“groping.”
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55. “Leaders are obligated to provide and
maintain momentum”
The only legitimate work in
an organization is work that
contributes to the
accomplishment of the
strategic plan.
It takes the orchestration of
management as well as
leadership to perpetuate
these capabilities into the
future.
Max DePree
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56. Plans and Planning
Plans are useless, but
planning is invaluable.
Winston Churchill
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57. Effective Communication
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58. The Original Mad Man: David Olgilvy
Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to
write well. Here are 10 hints:
1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it
three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short
paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize,'
'demassification,' 'attitudinally,' 'judgmentally.' They
are hallmarks of pretense.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it.
Read it aloud the next morning—and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve
it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure
it is crystal-clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don't write. Go and tell the guy
what you want."
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59. CIA Writing Rules
• Keep the language crisp and
pungent; prefer the forthright to the
pompous and ornate.
• Do not stray from the subject; omit
the extraneous, no matter how
brilliant it may seem or even be.
• Favor the active voice and shun
streams of polysyllables and
prepositional phrases.
• Keep sentences and paragraphs
short, and vary the structure of both.
• Be frugal in the use of adjectives and
adverbs; let nouns and verbs show
their own power.
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60. Edit
• Look at every word in a
sentence and decide if
they are really needed.
If not, kill them. Be
ruthless
• Don’t be afraid to kill
you babies.
– Bob Cooper
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61. Power Positions
• Title
• First Sentence
• Introduction
• Transition sentences
• Argument sentence
• Theme sentence
• Conclusion
• Final Sentence
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62. So What?
• Emphasis on what is
significant
• The Purpose
• The Call to Action
• The Take-away
• The Promise
• Think of the reader
asking “so what?” after
reading your piece
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63. Point Towards
• Future Directions
• Rally call
• Inspire
• The Challenge
• What you are asking the
reader to do.
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64. Recap
• Recapitulation
• Not a repeat
• State it differently
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65. Last Sentence
• Finish Strong
• Make it Memorable
• Link back to the intro
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66. HR People Power
• There are two ways of
being creative. One can
sing and dance. Or one
can create an
environment in which
singers and dancers
flourish.
• A’s hire A’s and B’s hire
C’s
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67. Lead Wisely
• Because the awakened
one puts himself
behind, he steps ahead.
Because he gives way,
he gains. Because he is
selfless, he fulfills
himself. The still is the
lord of the restless.
Lao-Tzu
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68. Leadership
Strategy and Communication
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