Strategic Leadership: A White Paper Approach to Engaging Power, Politics, and Coalitions

Samuel R. James, Ed.D.

A leader’s success is predicated upon two competencies: creating strategy and managing the people. A senior manager assumes the responsibility for assessing the organization and transforming it into a vision of what he or she believes it needs to become. As Ciampa and Watkins have indicated in Right From the Start, momentum must be built at the same time by energizing people, addressing the most important problems, creating trustworthiness, and achieving mutual goals. The leader’s pathway for organizing the vast volume of information and multiple relationships that need to be thought-out and aligned grows out of understanding the organization. Then he or she creates strategy, and aligns the people. When senior managers fail, they often excel in one area but are deficient in the other. Balancing the two domains is essential for a strategic leader.

Take for example, Maxwell Marley (all names are composites of real people and places) whose technical and strategic skills differentiated him from his peers. As an EVP, Max was responsible for developing a new product line to take advantage of the emerging baby boomers retirement needs. Included in his charge was an increased budget that expanded his staff with a clear mandate to supplement his staff with new people who were “up to the challenge” of redefining the industry. Needing to strengthen the company’s core products, the CEO believed that now was the time to develop new products that would cater to the needs of the aging baby boomers. Some of their competitors had tried similar initiatives, but none had found the strategy for success. The CEO believed that the first company to successfully attract new customers would have a significant advantage in defining the industry’s standards and reaping the rewards. Further, the CEO viewed Max’s ability to successfully lead the company’s new product line, while developing his team, would be his litmus test for becoming the inside candidate for the COO, and perhaps even become the CEO of the future.

Max had an impressive background in operations and marketing, rising quickly through the organization. He had a reputation for a daunting work ethic, effective interpersonal skills, and the ability to deliver complex projects on time and within his budget. He also was very self confident, sometimes to the dismay of others. The only question about his ability to lead the new product line was a concern about his management skills. He had scoffed at training courses that would help him be more self-aware of his behavioral patterns. Leadership development projects, three-sixty feedback, and coaching opportunities had been rejected as time away from more pressing matters. While his reluctance to take advantage of such development opportunities troubled some of the senior staff, the CEO reasoned that the project was going to require a leader with enormous energy and a competitive drive. With help, the CEO was confident that he could strengthen his managerial skills.

Max took on his new charge with verve and vigor and quickly developed his team around his theme BBEAM: Baby Boomers Excel and Motivate. This appealing mantra captured the scope of the product line that involved providing emerging retirees, hit hard in the economic downturn, with securities that would help them recover and manage their retirement. Each of his direct reports was given an assignment as well as dates for progress reports against their agreed-upon goals. Feeling a sense of urgency to deliver results, he believed that developing his team would be time-consuming and produce limited results; thus, he developed one-on-one relationships with each member. He concentrated on keeping each person focused on specific parts of the project and measured his or her progress against agreed on expectations. By parsing the work into manageable segments, he reasoned, he could develop the foundation for the new services. After all, it was up to him to be the architect of the strategy that would yield results.

Max’s experience had taught him that the price of success was very demanding. His stamina to stay focused and keep others focused had differentiated him from his peers; instinctively, he believed that this would be the best way to achieve timely results. Further, the importance of the project was at the top of the CEO’s and the chairman’s list and he had a green light to move forward with haste. While his team was initially achieving the level of results that he expected, the first sign of trouble emerged with his cross-functional partners. His sense of urgency was blinding him to the impact his initiatives and demands were having on them. For instance, when his department needed resources or collaboration from other business units, he would meet with fellow vice presidents and their teams and outline what he needed from them. Such actions led one of his peers to the conclusion that he “overwhelms us into compliance.” In fact, many complained that they were initially ready to assist Max; however, his demands inundated their time-starved schedules. Fearing additional work, they began to withhold information from him and his team. One of his peers stated that he and his team wanted to “work with Max” but the situation seemed to be requiring that “we work for Max.”

As an important date for presenting progress to-date to the CEO and senior management team approached, Max ’s demands of his subordinates left most exhausted and some resentful. “I am never home; my family is very upset with me,” one stated. Another lamented, “This is Max’s chance to make it to the corner office. Unfortunately we are the rockets used to blast him to the top.” While he was able to show impressive strategic results to his CEO and peers, the infrastructure of his team and constituency groups was crumbling around him.

Complex tasks call for complex systems built upon a coalition of cross-functional disciplines. Senior leaders live and die by the quality of their coalitions. Too few, however, recognize the importance of the time, patience, respect for differences, and persistence required to build dynamic coalitions. In Max’s case, his peers believed in his plan. They thought BBEAM: Baby Boomers Excel and Motivate was a compelling and marketable idea. Internally it captured the scope of the new plan and all could easily understand Max’s vision. Externally, the idea would be easy to market because the professionally community would quickly see its relevance and appeal. Many in the organization, themselves “boomers,” appreciated the fact he was not only creating a valuable opportunity for the company but offering assistance to a group of people facing difficult options. One-by-one Max was tackling the most important steps, which in his mind, would ensure success. While he had made the case for the new services, he had not created a multi-disciplinary coalition willing to work together to ensure a successful entry into the market. Even though many of his strategic partners respected his ideas, they were ready to revolt. The CEO thus had a dilemma. The right leader had been assigned in terms of his technical skills, creativity, and drive, but the concern about his limited managerial skills was threatening to undermine the project. What was the CEO going to do?

Unfortunately, Max’s experience is all too common. Many new senior managers have mastered the ability to set strategy and achieve results; in fact, such managers typically excel under pressure. Eager to demonstrate results, however, they do not combine the strategic and interpersonal demands of their new position. What if they have to go slow in order to be quick? Such a question can be very frustrating to a manager who takes hold of the opportunity and moves ahead with great haste. Transitions are as much about group dynamics and coalitions as they are corporate strategy. The senior leader must entice team members and other business units to engage in a compelling challenge, but success cannot be created in a vacuum or the privacy of the senior leader’s own thoughts. Rather, the challenge is the result of all of the dynamics of a living system—superiors, peers, subordinates, customers, etc.—being involved in the process of envisioning and implementing the plan.

The CEO did not want to lose momentum by replacing Max. He also wanted to use this as an opportunity to test his aptitude and willingness to manage and achieve results with and through others. This was an opportunity for Max to develop his team and build cross-functional constituency groups aligned with his plan. The plan was on track and they could afford to take some time to help him balance his strategic demands with his ailing management skills. To this end, he recruited our consulting group to work with him toward working more effectively with Max, his team, and constituency partners. With our help, Max identified three areas where he needed to make changes: (1) to work more closely with his boss; (2) become politically competent so as to create a power base; and (3) develop his team and constituency groups.

Working Closely With the CEO
When a senior manager is eager to demonstrate results, there is a tendency to over- rely on creating a plan of action without sufficient inclusion of the CEO, especially if he or she is a candidate for the CEO’s position. Their take-charge manner can initially yield results, but over time, the same skills that yielded early outcomes can alienate and/or offend the CEO and senior management team. We have found that a different dynamic promotes straightforwardness, discussion, and the development of a coalition that is able to align with the desired results. Our somewhat unique process has involved working with senior managers to create working “white papers” that are a detailed outline of the project’s goals, the resources and assistance needed from the CEO and peers, steps toward realizing the plan, team responsibilities, cross-functional collaborators and their roles, measurements of success or benchmarks, and timelines.

During this process, we work with the senior leader to scrutinize “big ideas,” and translate each part into manageable steps. The white papers are created by projecting the work onto a screen so that the senior manager can see his or her ideas developing. The process of putting ideas on the big screen requires a commitment to rigorous thinking, innovation, and identifying areas of expertise that lay outside the senior manager’s team. Quickly, most senior managers realize that ideas that appear to be adequately articulated often wilt under the scrutiny of putting them to paper. The rigor of good thinking is challenging but it works. Ideas can be moved from one part of the paper to another to prioritize or clarify important objectives. A hard copy of the working document is simultaneously generated so that missing elements can be quickly identified and added to the plan. At the end, the senior manager has both a hard and e-copy that guides testing and vetting the ideas with others before presenting the draft to the CEO.

The white paper is thus a working document and not a completed business plan. The revised white paper is presented to the CEO as a working document; not a proposed business plan. This framework encourages active problem solving and discussions along the way that strengthen the overall design. The clarity of the paper helps the senior leader test if the CEO and fellow senior managers are prepared to align with the presented plan. This is one of the most important times in the entire process. Many times a CEO will not offer a direction, preferring to provide the opportunity for the senior manager to exert his or her own influence. However, when invited into the design they collaborate openly. If the CEO and/or senior management team is not prepared to support the plan, it is important to find this out early on and determine want they will support. We have found to the contrary that they welcome the clarity of thought and build on the presented ideas.

Good thinking is contagious and brings the best out in others. The senior manager can also test which ideas are openly endorsed and which ones receive a skeptical review by the CEO or one of the members of the senior management team. These objectives will likely be the ones that meet resistance, directly or indirectly, and need further discussions that uncover the reasons for the hesitation, in order to gain buy in. For instance, Max and the CEO reviewed areas of uncertainty with his senior team to gain additional insights and build momentum among the senior leaders. The inclusion of the senior management team had the desired effect of quelling the angst about his leadership and engaged Max’s peers in the process.

This is a challenging assignment for even the most seasoned leaders. In our experience, however, when senior leaders define the requisite steps and identify learning gaps, they typically relax. Their need to be in charge and prove their value is replaced with confidence that he or she can map disparate ideas into a woven plan of action based on a coalition of partners. Changing their focus from “I get it right” to “we get it right” insulates the senior leader from nagging self-doubt or rugged individualism. The process is also humbling for senior leaders as they come to see what they can and cannot control and accept the importance of their reliance on others to realize the end goal. A good plan not only identifies what needs to be done; it also identifies how it needs to be presented in order to promote acceptance and cooperation from partners crucial to the project’s success.

After meeting with the CEO, the senior manager engages his or his team in defining their individual parts of the plan. Katzenbach and Smith in The Wisdom of Teams assert that teams develop from a shared understanding of compelling goals that challenge people to commit themselves to make a difference. Teams transform broad directives into specific and measurable performance goals; agree on specific performance objectives; determine how each person can best contribute to the team’s goals; and create a symbiotic like relationship whereby each depends on the other to stay relevant and vital. These ideas are uncomplicated. Transforming a collection of people, however, into a committed group oriented to goals and results in a climate of trust, where data are shared freely, and decisions are made collectively, is demanding. It is achievable, however, by including the senior manager’s team in the architecture of how they will work together and what they will focus on.

Together the senior manager and the team review the plan’s purpose and translate each objective into specific and measurable performance goals. Drawing upon their complimentary skills, they determine captains of key sections and agree on areas in which others will provide support. This process ensures that each undertakes critical work and eliminates the possibility that two or more members will inadvertently focus on the same area. Once the purpose has been clarified and assignments agreed to, we meet with the team members one-on-one to create a white paper that is similar to the one their senior leader completed: strategies for achieving results against key deliverables, resources, timelines, measurements, and cross-functional partners. Upon completion of the draft, the senior manager meets with the direct report and us for a presentation of the subordinate’s plan. Together they discuss the draft and problem solve the recommendations until the senior manager gives the go-ahead

When Max’s team completed their individual white papers, he assembled them and asked each to present his or his plan. Working from diverse perspectives, they analyzed and adopted a collective strategy, enhanced the accuracy of individual initiatives, and committed to implementing each. For instance, when each member presented his or her strategic white paper, the group’s discussion strengthened that presenter’s plan. Together they looked for areas of alignment, collaboration, and potential conflict. He was impressed with their level of expertise and willingness to help each other refine his or his plan. After each had presented, they reviewed the plan in more detail: Were any key steps missing? Together they clarified a collective strategic direction and prioritized actions so that each was aligned with peers, superiors, and subordinates. The prioritization process helped each agree on the short- and long-term objectives so that they could act with confidence and commitment.

They further identified stakeholders throughout the company that they needed to shape into a coalition. An open plan helped them initiate a transparent process that in time carried over to the other members of their coalition. As a result, a cohesiveness, born from the risk of presenting and building ideas together, resulted in an energized team, one that had identified and discussed the most important problems, created trustworthiness, and achieved mutual goals. With Max’s team defined and focused on their objectives, he turned his attention to other members of the coalition by making the case for their involvement.

Throughout this process, there are multiple benefits for a senior manager. The senior leader is provided with a collaborator who is equipped with a methodology that invites open inquiry, in-depth discussions, problem solving, and generating next steps. The process used by the consultant helps a senior manager create compelling ideas based on involvement with stakeholders throughout the organization. This step involves working with him or her to determine what needs to be presented, to whom, and to identify tactics for obtaining the best reception. It also involves helping the client look for opportunities that create discussions and engagement between the thought leaders who will ultimately decide the initiatives’ outcome. Honing the ideas in these ways helps build courage in the face of inevitable conflict when innovations are introduced into a static system. Over time the partnership becomes a valuable relationship or a forum for feedback to the senior manager about his or his leadership style and other personal characteristics that will aid as well as encumber the project’s success. In the end, the partnership helps the senior leader decide how to deal with each of the steps in the process while creating a coalition based on political competence and a strong power base.

Political Competence and a Strong Power Base

Bennis and Nanus in Leaders proposed a new paradigm of leadership by redefining power as the “basic energy needed to initiate and sustain action translating intention into reality.” Power enables a vision to be realized. Through the use of power, leaders can set bold directions, commit resources, adapt to environmental changes, and empower people to accomplish results. Without the effective use of power, little is accomplished. When used effectively, power is the currency that creates visions of opportunity and mobilizes stakeholders to commit valuable resources to a significant opportunity or change in the environment. This understanding is directly opposite the hard-to-shake conventional view that power is about control, corrupt intentions, and territorial supremacy. Correctly understood and applied, power is in fact the energy that makes a senior leader effective.

Bacharach defined political competence in Get Them on Your Side: Win Support, Convert Skeptics, Get Results as “understanding what the leader can and cannot control, identifying key allies and obstacles, and mapping the political terrain in service of leading a coalition willing to take action and create change.” Political competence is the ability to begin with a compelling idea and build and sustain a coalition until the nascent idea is put to practical use. The concept of politics, like power, has taken on a bad reputation as the wheeling and dealing leader who cannot be trusted. Again, if understood correctly, nothing could be further from the truth. Collectively, power and political competencies are reframed as essential ingredients in effective leadership.

Developing political competence is often a struggle for a senior manager because it entails creating a power base of people willing to align with their goals. This entails synthesizing and articulating the white paper’s plan with all of the stakeholders; those who agree with it as well as those with competing agendas. This is achieved within a transparent style with no surprises that invites collaboration and respects the inherent quid-pro-quo in making deals. The innate give-and take creates a dissonance of ideas ensuring that all aspects of the project are pored over so that the final result withstands the pressures of the competitive market place. Managing this process is at times more of a psychological struggle than a strategic one. Relationships take time to create. Defining a strategy and effectively selling it to others who approach the problem from a different set of assumptions is time well spent. The work of a coalition is at times a messy business. Earning the right to influence others is a right of passage that needs to be approached thoughtfully with patience and resilience.

Max began by presenting his vision to the functional groups most aligned with his team, discussing specific assistance they needed from each of the groups, and making clear how their involvement was critical to the project’s success. Concurrently, he listened to other’s functional priorities and limitations and began to weave dissimilar points of view into a cross-functional strategy. He shared information openly and sought others’ opinions. He did not expect that this would flow smoothly and looked for opportunities to create ownership for the project with each business unit. Without ownership, they would not be willing to invest in the multi-layers of work needed. He gave them credit for their contributions and made sure that senior management understood each group’s unique contribution. He was building a coalition by bringing others in sooner, pulling together information, and ensuring that each group of the coalition was providing the resources that are needed. Max was subjugating personal power by focusing on his team and constituency groups’ abilities to be successful.

Political competence is pursuing cross-functional solutions and managing the gray spaces among the different groups. Stakeholders want to know what is in it for them when they collaborate. That is human nature. Work is after all a social system where people exchange services in order to get their needs met. While “corrupt power” holds that the other groups have to be mastered and contained, effective power involves the willingness to barter for services and participation in the open based on a goal that is clearly stated and good for the organization. Over time, building a coalition is creating common benefits that serve the overall purposes of all or most of the members.

Max, by example, brought the Distribution team into the design early on so that they could help with product management. In time, they would inherit responsibilities for testing and distributing the products and he wanted to ensure that their knowledge was integrated early on. As he came to see that he and his team were linked with all of the other teams, he accepted that he was part of a connected system; his decisions and actions affected others. Developing political competence helped him make an impact across the interconnected system of teams and business units by respecting their needs and limitations. Even though his team was his primary responsibility, he was also responsible for the impact that the new product lines were having on other business units. By understanding and addressing the outcome, he was enhancing a power base that helped achieve greater results than he initially anticipated, or than he could ever have achieved alone. The process was slower than he desired; however, his strategic skills were balanced by an increasing capacity to create a coalition that he and his team could work with effectively.


A Coalition of Teams and Constituency Groups

Leaders of complex projects recognize that the successful preparation of their team is just the beginning. This is, however, the first and an indispensable building block in creating an effective coalition. This is delicate work. While a team can be successful within its own specialty, the coalition can fall apart very quickly, often for mundane reasons. The senior leader’s responsibility is to gain an agreement about the importance of multiple groups working together towards a common goal. At this point the leader needs to be part salesman who makes the case, part community organizer who builds for the common good, and part task-master committed to the project. Attaining buy-in from those who are both sympathetic as well as those who oppose the leader’s plan is equally demanding. In fact, the sympathetic partners are often the most difficult to work with. They can merely agree and then go about other responsibilities with little involvement with the coalition. The failure to gain working agreements will result in isolating the senior leader’s team and jeopardizing the whole project.

There are other points of potential vulnerability as well. Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed in Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for the Change Masters that a project is most vulnerable at its mid-point. This is the time when the critics get louder. Creating a new product line, for instance, is no longer a vague idea. When it is taking shape and momentum is building, the opponents raise their greatest challenges. Leaders of coalitions must come to terms with the reality that relationships are challenging—alliances must be based on trust and a commitment to the organization’s well-being—and set backs occur. When such relationships are in place, small conflicts can be identified and resolved before they have a chance to escalate. Conflicts, however, are inevitable, but handled well they become the glue that helps hold the project together. When a leader can identify obstacles—tactical and interpersonal—and address them successfully, the coalition gains stability and commitment. Developing cohesiveness is a process that is repeated over-and-over during the life of the project. The cohesion that coalitions seek comes from the successful management of their conflicts and gaining momentum toward success. The conflicts are not a sign of trouble. To the contrary, they offer an opportunity to identify one of many obstacles to the successful management of any coalition, discuss it, seek resolution, and move forward.

At the mid-point of a project, the problems are apt to be as much about the personal costs of the project as they are tactical. If another leader or team feels their territorial sovereignty is being violated, this threat must be addressed. When one team has to work over time so that others receive what they need, this inequity needs to be recognized. When sub groups have competing assumptions about the best way to proceed, they have to resolve the impasse. The goal of the leader is to be resilient and close enough to the cross-functional partners so that he or she can identify concerns, problem solve, and maintain the coalition’s work. The senior leader has to appreciate the ups and downs of the process and see them against a diagonal line moving toward results. While this period is at times very uncomfortable, it is also the environment where leaders are formed; such periods offer the opportunities to develop the requisite skills to listen, communicate, problem solve, make deals, and untimely act decisively. It is through such grind and grit that functional leaders expand a narrow-minded understanding of leadership of their team by becoming strategic leaders responsible for ensuring that all entities come through the process whole and in tact.

While the work of the strategic leader occurs in the midst of multiple groups, it starts with a clear vision and strategy for his or her team. This is the initial foundation that will be tested, shaken, and reshaped as the coalition is built and delivers. When the members of the leader’s team are clear and focused, they can progress against the goals. When the team engages conflicts with cross-functional partners, they need the assistance of a strategic leader who has built alliances across the organization and has the CEO’s endorsement. These situations afford an opportunity to both support the direct report and simultaneously teach how to problem solve with others who have a different agendas or expectations about ways to proceed. The coalition is thus a living and learning system led by a strategic leader focused on goals, use of effective power, and developing the political competence necessary to form partners and teams with the collective ability to ensure that bold initiatives become tomorrow’s necessities.