Are your strategic leadership and culture supporting or inhibiting your organisation’s journey towards a successful future?

Global leadership research persistently highlights that there is a critical shortage of good strategic leaders, not just in the UK, but around the world. Failures in strategic leadership contribute to a weakening in economic competitiveness, organisational underperformance, and are at times counted in lives and livelihoods lost. Therefore, what should be done about this global phenomenon, which applies to business corporations, public services, and the third sector?

Based on several years of intensive research into excellence in board and strategic leadership, Kuldip Reyatt proposes the transformation of strategic leadership practice and development of good strategic leaders. These activities demand substantial investment over the long-term, they require sponsorship at the highest level in organisations, and crucially should form part of the culture. As a result, achieving excellence in board and strategic leadership should not be the exception, but become ‘the way we do things around here’.

Kuldip’s presentation will draw on insights from four key streams of research – Excellence in Board Leadership; the Strategic Visioning Experiences of more than 50 of the UK’s most prominent CEOs; Executive and Strategic Leadership Development in the UK, which involves several of the UK’s major corporate, public service, and third sector organisations; and The Future of Strategic Leadership Development. Kuldip will not only provide insights from the UK, but also what is emerging from the international phases of these research projects.

One of the key challenges that businesses face is the need to establish exactly what leadership, and particularly strategic leadership, means in specific organisational contexts. Contrary to much of the ‘pop leadership literature’, strategic leadership is not about people in leadership positions doing strategy. Kuldip proposes that the fundamental responsibility of authentic strategic leadership is to provide meaning and purpose for the activities of all people within the organisation through effective and ethical strategic visioning.

We will explore culture and sub-cultures at multiple levels of the organisation, in order to explain how culture fundamentally affects strategic leadership practice and development. Cathy Glass, Director of Mettle Consulting, will share case studies of how the Mettle Leadership and Mettle Culture Gauges have been utilised to navigate key leadership, culture and organisation challenges...