The Stategic Manager Series™

Why The Strategic Manager Series™?

Great organizations today carefully name and list the competencies they require of managers to gain a competitive business advantage. Wise organizations invest in people by adding to and enhancing their competencies.

Strategy for individual Business Units used to be set only at the top followed by “rollouts” in elaborate meetings full of fanfare and announced goals. In today’s economy with global competition and neck-breaking acceleration of changes, the order of the day is “emergent strategy,” which is the ability to change and adjust on very short notice. Leadership is clear that yesterday’s solutions or experience will not meet today’s requirements. Now, it is the Business Unit managers who sets strategy and assures the alignment of their unit with the larger organization.

Leading companies have new expectations of their managers. Senior leaders want more from managers than day-to-day decisions. They want managers to take a longer term look at the issues. They want more than problem-solving and symptom fixes that are problematic for upstream or downstream partners. They want systemic fixes. They want performance managers who “move the dial” on employee engagement and customer satisfaction versus their competitors. They expect managers to be the direct link to changing employee attitudes about key business outcomes, like productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, quality and safety. In short, they want managers who are strategic partners.

Strategic managers are skilled in engaging multiple generations of employees in the workplace. They are responsible to improve the likelihood of their employees to stay committed and stay put in the company. They are competent in analytical and creative thinking. Today’s “working managers” delegate, coach, engage, influence and empower their employees to free up more of their own time for strategy. Highly skilled strategic managers develop a strong reputation even outside the organization while attracting talent who would love to work for them even from outside the organization.

The mindset for developing today’s managers is productivity - not training. With such heavy workloads, a manager’s time away from the job takes significantly from the job. The time to progressively develop needed performance skills is scarce and sending managers away for one or more days is often out of the question.


	Why The Strategic Manager Series™? Great organizations today carefully name and list the competencies they require of managers to gain a competitive business advantage. Wise organizations invest in people by adding to and enhancing their competencies. Strategy for individual Business Units used to be set only at the top followed by “rollouts” in elaborate meetings full of fanfare and announced goals. In today’s economy with global competition and neck-breaking acceleration of changes, the order of the day is “emergent strategy,” which is the ability to change and adjust on very short notice. Leadership is clear that yesterday’s solutions or experience will not meet today’s requirements. Now, it is the Business Unit managers who sets strategy and assures the alignment of their unit with the larger organization. Leading companies have new expectations of their managers. Senior leaders want more from managers than day-to-day decisions. They want managers to take a longer term look at the issues. They want more than problem-solving and symptom fixes that are problematic for upstream or downstream partners. They want systemic fixes. They want performance managers who “move the dial” on employee engagement and customer satisfaction versus their competitors. They expect managers to be the direct link to changing employee attitudes about key business outcomes, like productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, quality and safety. In short, they want managers who are strategic partners. Strategic managers are skilled in engaging multiple generations of employees in the workplace. They are responsible to improve the likelihood of their employees to stay committed and stay put in the company. They are competent in analytical and creative thinking. Today’s “working managers” delegate, coach, engage, influence and empower their employees to free up more of their own time for strategy. Highly skilled strategic managers develop a strong reputation even outside the organization while attracting talent who would love to work for them even from outside the organization. The mindset for developing today’s managers is productivity - not training. With such heavy workloads, a manager’s time away from the job takes significantly from the job. The time to progressively develop needed performance skills is scarce and sending managers away for one or more days is often out of the question.