Strategic Leadership“I have a Roadmap AND a GPS so why am I lost?

Marilyn A. Hosea

Calif

orn

ia H

ead S

tart

Associa

tion

July

2010

1

Introductions

2

Schedule

Wednesday, July 28

10:45 a.m. to Noon

Noon to 1:00 pm (Lunch)

1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Thursday, July 29

9:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

~Session Etiquette~

Breaks are self-initiated

Start on time/end on time

Cell phones disengaged

Dialogue and conversations respectfully engaged

3

Session Outline

Chapter 1 Leadership and Strategy

Chapter 2 Head Start’ Strategic History

*****

Chapter 3 Strategic Irrationality and Adaptation

Chapter 4 Illusions, intuition and applied strategies

Chapter 5 Evaluating Strategic Plans and Tactics

Chapter 6 The Art of Strategic Planning

Closing Endnotes

4

Day 1

Chapter 1

Leadership and Strategy

Ever notice that “what the hell” is always

the right decision?

~Unknown Hollywood script writer

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Organizational Development

Entrepreneurship

Finance

Organizational Behavior

Management

Strategy

Leadership

Technology & Innovation

Governance

Strategic Planning 23,300,000 (General)

1,340,000 (nonprofit specific)

Source: Google Search Engine

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Key words

Leadership

Strategy

Strategic planning

Intentionality

Intuition

Adaptation

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Strategic leadership

Self

Strategic purpose

Strategic direction and tactics

“Wherever you go, there

you are.”

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My strategic anchors

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The Art of War ~Sun Tzu (500 B.C.)

Why Strategize?

Strategy reduces impulsive

behaviors

Strategy can be observed and

learned

Strategy and leadership =

competitive advantage

Strategy is linked to planning

which is linked to opportunity

and success

Words mean something… Commander

War

Competition

Deception

Earth

Heaven

Moral Law

Method and Discipline

Virtue

Generals

Tactics

Victory

Operations

Enemy

Attack

Defense

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The Art of War ~Sun Tzu

•The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage and strictness.

• To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.

•Hence the saying, If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

•There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever be seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes,, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack—the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.

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Chapter 2

Head Start’s Strategic History

The American Idealist

http://americanidealistmovie.org/videoClips2.htm

No one victory is gained in the same manner as

another.

~Sun Tzu

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The American Idealist

http://www.theamericanidealistmovie.org ($9.70-including shipping

and handling!)

htttp://www.facinghistory.org - Education is a crucial tool for

strengthening civil societies. Facing History provides opportunities for people of all

ages to recognize the importance of civic participation and learn from the

courage and resilience of others.

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Dinner Conversation

What was Sargent Shriver’s strategy for fighting poverty?

What tactics did he use?

What obstacles did he encounter?

What were the results of his efforts as director of the War on

Poverty? Was the War on Poverty a success?

What leadership traits or characteristics should we adopt/adapt

to be effective in our line of work?

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Chapter 3

All who wander are not lost.

J.R. Tolkien

Strategic

Irrationality and

adaptations

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What was I (or they) thinking?

Moi

Curves

Twilight Head Start

They

The Iraq War

Hurricane Katrina

BP Oil Disaster

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Lessons from the *Tidee-Ho

debaclesIn a boat that's built of sticks and hay,We drifted from the shore,With a captain who's too proud to say,That he dropped the oar,Now a tiny hole has sprung a leak,In this cheap pontoon,Now the hull has started growing

weak,And we're gonna be sinkin' soon.

We're gonna beSinkin' soon,We're gonna beSinkin' soon,Everybody hold your breath 'cause,We're gonna be sinkin' soon

Nora Jones,

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Exercise

My Tidee-Ho Moment

1. Think about an on-the-job situation in which you found yourself “sinkin

soon”. Write or illustrate this event.

2. After the song stops share your experience with your table.

3. Wait for our signal to stop.

4. Voluntary feedback

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Research

Dan Ariely

Predictably Irrational

The Upside of Irrationality

On Adaption—why we

get used to things (but

not all things, and not

always)

Christopher Chabris and

Daniel Simons

Mental illusions that may

impair strategic thinking

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Irrationality and Adaptation

Irrationalities

Biases

My ideas are better than yours

Any solution, as long as it’s mine

The toothbrush theory (everyone wants a toothbrush, everyone needs one, everyone has one, but no one wants to use anyone else’s)

“The process of falling in love with our own ideas may lead to fixation. Once we are addicted to our own ideas, it is less likely that we will be flexible when necessary.” ~Dan Ariely

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The Boiling Frog Parable

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Adaptation

Physical adaptation—adapting to changes in expectation and experience

Hedonic adaptation-emotional leveling off—

when initial positive and negative perceptions

fade.

Hedonic treadmill (keeping up with the Jones’)

Getting Adaptation to work for us

Injecting serendipity and unpredictability into our

lives

Understanding strategic applications in our business

plans

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Chapter 4

Illusions, intuition and applied strategies

Exploring research in cognitive psychology

Becoming unreasonable

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;

The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt

the world to himself.

Therefore, all progress depends on the

unreasonable man.

~George Bernard Shaw

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Lab ExerciseCounting Interactions-data analysis

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This slide is

intentional

blank.

Duh.

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Applications

The Five Illusions:

The illusion of attention

The illusion of memory

The illusion of knowledge

The illusion of cause

The illusion of potential

“Pearls before Breakfast”, The Washington Post,

April 8, 2008.

Cycling: “More riders mean more potential clashes” (Headline: Denver Post, Sunday, July 11,

2010)

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Day 2

Chapter 5

Evaluating Strategic Plans and TacticsDirty Rotten Strategies and other mishaps

“I suspect that most failures occur because we

attempt to solve the wrong problems in the first

place, and not because we fail to get the right

solutions to the right problems.

~John Tukey

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The Art of Screwing Up Royally

Ian I. Mitroff & Abraham Silvers, Dirty Rotten Strategies: How we

Trick Ourselves into Solving the Wrong Problems Precisely

Chapter Titles:

Organized Meanness: The Biggest and Most Broken Health System in

the World

National Insecurities: The Complete and Utter Failure to Understand

Why Bigger is no longer Better

The Wonderful World of Academia: Misrepresenting Reality

The Abuse and Misuse of Science

A General Theory of Rottenness

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Gems

“The problems one already knows how to solve

may bear little resemblance to the problems one

actually needs to solve.” (pg. xv)

“Better a poor answer to the right question than a good answer

to the wrong question.”

“Assumption is the mother of all **!#% ups. We can’t solve old

and new problems with assumptions, mindsets, and institutions

of the past.”

“A partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than

the whole solutions of each of its parts taken separately.”

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Type Errors (1 -4)

Type I Error—proposition that there is a meaningful difference

between two hypothesis when there is not.

Type II Error—proposition that there is not a meaningful

difference between hypothesis when there is.

Type III Error- is the unintentional error of solving the wrong

problems precisely. (e.g. What good does it do to minimize or control for

Type I and Type II Errors if the problem one is attempting to solve is wrong to

begin with?)

Type IV Error-is the intentional error of solving the wrong

problems.

Ian I. Mitroff & Abraham Silvers, 2008

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“Managers and technicians

do known things right;

Leaders are asked what are

the right things to do.

~Peter Drucker

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Watch for Type III and IV Errors

Ethical and epistemic narrowness

Defining a problem too narrowly through the use of

a single, preferred discipline, profession, ideology,

worldview, set of values or assumptions, and so on…

Ignoring other value systems, professions, ideologies

and worldviews—reducing everything to a single

issue.

Discrediting other value systems, professions,

ideologies and worldviews—ignoring that every

problem has both technical and social dimensions.

Focusing primarily, if not altogether, on certain

stakeholders while ignoring and discrediting others.

Ignoring complexity and messiness; faultily

eliminating complexity and messiness through

reductionism.

Ian I. Mitroff & Abraham Silvers, 2008

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Watch for Type III and IV Errors

Epistemic confusion

Confusing the difficulty in defining and solving

complex, messy situations or problems by

contending that they are impossible

Picking the wrong metrics, yardsticks, or methods

and standards of evaluation.

Confused and faulty argumentation: Unethical

arguments

The deliberate or accidental use of faulty arguments

to mislead the public

Ian I. Mitroff & Abraham Silvers, 2008

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Chapter 6

The Art of Strategic Planning

The Christopher Columbus School of Management

When Columbus set out,

He did not know where he was going,

When he got there,

He did not know where he was,

When he returned,

He did not know where he had been.

Masaaki Imai and Brian HeymansGeba Kaizen: Organizational Change in Real Time

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Monty Python: The Bridge of Death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpx6XnankZ8

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You have to know these things when

you are king, you know….

Michael Allison and Jude Kaye. Strategic

Planning for Nonprofit Organizations: A Practical

Guide and Workbook. 2nd Edition.

(CompassPoint Nonprofit Services)

Worksheets

CD included

Sidebars and Case Studies

Tools and Techniques for program evaluation

Self-Assessment survey for boards and staff

Templates for strategic and operational plans

Selected References

36

CompassPoint© Strategy

Phase I Get Ready

Phase 2 Define your Mission, vision, values

Phase 3 Assess you organization’s situation

Phase 4 Agree on priorities

Phase 5 Write the plan

Phase 6 Implement the plan

Phase 7 Evaluate and monitor the plan

37

Recap

Strategy reduces impulsive behaviors

Strategy can be observed and learned

Strategy and leadership = competitive advantage

Strategy is linked to planning which is linked to

opportunity and success

38

Strategic leadership

Self

Strategic purpose

Strategic direction and tactics

“Wherever you go, there

you are.”

39

Closing

Endnotes

Concluding Thoughts

Resources and References

Networking Opportunities

Survey support

I can see clearly no, the rain is gone I can see

all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun-shiny day.

~Johnny Nash

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