Moving from Operational Manager to Strategic Leader

I wanna make an impact, I wanna have a positive difference. If you've ever thought that to yourself in terms of your workplace, then we are looking at strategic leadership. In the business environment strategic leadership is required on so many layers of management, whether or not you are leading teams, whether or not your teams are being led remotely or virtually, whether or not you are accountable to client satisfaction or whether or not you are wanting to make a change in the organization that you are working for.

All of these things require strategic leadership and, but when it comes to business operations, a lot of people that come to me, they come to me for coaching and guidance on how do I move from business operations, operational management into strategic leader leadership, first of all is to understanding what it, what it means by business operations. Operations refers to a whole variety of activities that require the day-to-day functioning of the company that allows it to be profitable and allows it to be productive. And that's what it means by business operations.

Now, operations for any specific company could be very different. It depends, and it's very unique to the company. So when it comes to how do you move from operations, the day-to-day functioning of the business into more of a strategic level?

What I'm gonna share with you are five key focus areas that if you focus on these five areas, that you will be moving into strategic leadership. Now, I'm not saying that you must all of a sudden focus on all five areas at once. You might notice that one or two of them are easier to focus on.

You might notice that one or two of them are more difficult for you. But just start with one of them and you add it to your repertoire to expand your knowledge base, to expand your skill as well, and to expand your mindset and understanding of each of each focus area. So let's dive right in.

Five key focus areas. Focus area number one is big picture. And what does that mean?

Big picture refers to how can you see beyond the day-to-day operations? Because we all start out there in operations, day-to-day functioning, ensuring that the company can be up and running on day-to-day basis. Can we, how can we ensure that there's, there's functionality and productivity?

But to move to strategic leadership, it's important to see beyond that. And the most important part to see beyond day-to-day operations is what is the overall strategic direction and the overall objectives of the whole company? And seeing that through the different time lenses.

So here's what I mean by the time lenses, depending on, depending on your industry and depending on your company, the time lenses are different. For example, it could be that you work in an industry where the preparation of the strategic direction goes 10 years in advance. In other words, your company has 10 year goals, or maybe they had generational goals and, and this happens a lot in sustainability industry, where they plan generations out, what are our children's children's future gonna look like?

So that could be the furthest out time lens. And then as the organization sets strategic objectives, they draw closer and closer time lenses. So we go from a ten year out or a generation farthest out, and then they have annual objectives.

From the annual objectives they clo go closer in. They have, they have quarterly objectives. From the quarterly objectives, they come closer in and there's monthly goals.

And from monthly you have weekly and so on. So how can you understand the overall strategy and the objectives through all those different time lenses? And more importantly, here's the bonus.

It's not just understanding the big picture, but understanding how your work and your skills fit into that big picture. And when you're meditating on how does my work, how does what I do fit into that big picture? It's understanding how does what I do right now, how can it help to fulfill that overall strategy and that overall objective?

How does what I do fulfill it? Or if it doesn't currently fulfill it, how does my work need to be restructured in order for me to be able to fulfill the overall strategy and the objectives? And that is the first key area of focus, which is the big picture.

Focus area number two is business acumen. And this is focusing on understanding the business environment. I mentioned at the start of this training a business environment.

So what does the business environment entail? There's a variety of things. For example, understanding market trends, understanding customer satisfaction, understanding competitive pressures, understanding what the business needs right now, and understanding industry trends as well.

Those are just some examples of business acumen. At the end of it, the goal of de developing a deeper business acumen is to develop your business sense. And once you have that honed business sense, this is where you can reach up into strategy when you need to, to propose solutions or to propose new directions or to propose why new opportunities, why we need to pursue new opportunities and to step into that consultative role.

And this is the most important part. Once you have that business sense, understanding the business environment from business acumen, once you have that acumen, it is easier for to reach you, to reach up as a consultant within your company in that role and in order to reach up into strategy. So this is where you can ask yourself, what are some opportunities for me right now to learn more about these industry trends, these market trends as well?

What are some opportunities that I can take on to get the behind the scenes look at developing financial acumen as well, and understanding how businesses make decisions. And also understanding how to diagnose issues that we're having right now on productivity. All of these opportunities can develop your business acumen.

And that is the second key area of focus. Key area of focus number three is relationships. Strategic leadership is not accomplished alone.

As a strategic leader, you're going to be working closely with other leaders from different teams and different departments. Most of the time, these other people that you develop relationships with, you don't even directly manage. Or maybe they are steps above you in the org chart.

So when it comes to developing relationships with these individuals, the most important ones are relationships with business leaders and strong advisors as well. Set up see how you can set up regular meetings with them in person, preferably so that you can have conversations around strategy and overarching objectives as well. And when you had these conversations, the key's to understand where can I step into my consultative approach?

How can I develop my deeper business acumen, financial acumen, and so on? And when you develop these relationships, it's not just about building alliances, you're building alliances with them, yes, but it's more importantly around governance of your own emotions and to be able to manage emotions of other people. And when you're building these relationships with senior business leaders and advisors, it's not just about building alliances, it is more about how do I manage my own emotions and my judgments?

Because when it comes to overarching strategies and objectives, people will have opinions and strong opinions and their own reasons why they're suggesting this certain direction or that certain direction. So how can you come into these conversations being open to learn, being open to understand other people's perspectives and being open to having criticism and being open to having feedback about your suggestions as well. So it is more important to be able to manage your own judgments and your perspectives about things as you're having these conversations.

And that's part and parcel of building alliances with these relationships as well. So if you're listening to this so far, the first three key areas of focus is when it comes to having a strong business acumen, when it comes to having building relationships, when it comes to understanding the big picture of things with these first three key, key areas of focus. If you're nodding and you're understanding that these are important and you're wondering, well now I, I do sort of know these things, but how do I get at it?

How do I make it more actionable? How do I now develop these skills sets? And how do I foc begin focusing on these areas?

Then I invite you to work with me every single week I train on areas of business acumen, on areas of how to build strong alliances and also on areas on how do you develop strategic level big picture thinking. And every week I do trainings, high level trainings like this. So if you're serious about developing this acumen and this vernacular for yourself, then I invite you to click the link in the description below.

And that's a link for for you to talk to someone on my team, a a trained career specialist to help you decide whether or not working with me is the right decision for you and for me as well. And if you decide to be a part of it, then every week you're gonna be a part of a community of professionals that is working towards moving from operational into strategic leadership. I look forward to seeing you on the inside.

Focus area number four is creativity. Creativity means creative thinking. How do you think creatively?

And the best way to think creatively is be to be able to challenge assumptions, even your own assumptions. So when it comes to contributing to the organization at a strategic leadership level, think about how can you create solutions? How can you create visions of the future in which you wanna create?

And how do you do that by drawing from your big picture and also drawing from your business acumen? Key focus area number five is communication. When it comes to communication, there's three areas of communication.

The first area is to be able to communicate your vision in alignment with the company's vision. The second area of communication is to be able to communicate your strategy. And the third area is to be able to communicate both of those things persuasively.

So this is what you're gonna notice moving from operational to strategic leadership. It's gonna be less and less about your technical knowledge. In operations your technical know-how the crafts and your skillset, your technical skill sets is gonna be important because you've gotta be good at what you do and you have to do your work consistently and to have that top level of performance in operations, cuz that's the day-to-day functions of the business.

But as you move up into strategy, the technical knowhow, that craftsmanship that matters less and less and it becomes more and more about how do you communicate and more and more about how do you communicate diplomatically. So when it comes to communication, how do you focus on developing that skillset and being to be able to understand public speaking and articulating your thoughts, no matter how complex your vision is, how do you communicate it in ways that other people can understand and interpret it the way you intend it to be interpreted and most importantly, so that they can buy into that vision? Bonus focus area number six is to take risks when it comes to strategic leadership how can you take calculated risks to achieve a strategically defined goal?

When it comes to taking risks, we're not taking them blindly. We are taking data driven and calculated risks. But at the same time, you're able to understand what the risks are and to be able to create a clarity around the context of the situation, create clarity around the data so that different levels of management understand the data and what that, how that informs us on what risks to take and what risks not to take.

And how can you also create a shared language among departments as well as you are taking risks. And these are the steps about taking risk. And it's not about having the answers to things.

When you're taking risks to achieve goals. It's not about having the right answers, it is about asking the right questions. When you ask the right questions, when you ask good questions, this is how you can clarify the context.

This is how you can communicate data to take those risk and make risk driven decisions. And more importantly, that is how you can create a shared language. So if you're wondering to yourself, well, how do you ask good questions?

I have created a video step by step outlining how do you ask good questions? What does it take? What are some, what are the thought processes to ask in great questions like this?

That video is coming right up next. I'll see you there.