PART FIVE
The Challenge of Strategic Leadership
Leadership exists at three broad levels: team, operational and leadership. In Part Five we shall explore together the generic role of the strategic leader and its seven constituent functions.
There is an underlying unity in strategic leadership, whatever field you are in and however structured or unstructured your work in it may be. Walter Bagehot, a nineteenth-century banker, economist and journalist famous for his insights into economics and political questions, understood this well:
The summits of the various kinds of business are, like the tops of mountains, much more alike than the parts below – the bare principles are much the same; it is only the rich variegated details of the lower strata that so contrast with one another.
But it needs travelling to know that the summits are the same. Those who live on one mountain believe that their mountain is wholly unlike all others.
Don't think of these levels of leadership exclusively in terms of large organizations. Leaders at all levels need to think in terms of these team, operational and strategic functions, and this is especially true for leaders of small or medium-sized businesses.