Strategic Leadership: Why Great Companies Adapt their Management Models to Time

The question of leadership invariably surfaces in virtually all forms and levels of human organisation. However, in corporate management, leadership goes pari passu with a functional management structure. The intersession of leadership and management informs strategic leadership. Strategic leadership encompasses the responsibility of the senior executives which involve making board, long-term plans and directing the organisational resources.

Strategic leadership has been defined as a practice in which ‘’executives use different styles of management to develop a vision for their organisation that enables the organization to adapt to or remain competitive in a changing economic and technological climate’’. Strategic leaders are able to use this vision to motivate employees and departments, fostering among them a sense of unity and direction in order to implement change within their organisation.

The inability to bring leadership together with good management technique has been largely responsible for the failure of many businesses. According to a report by Small Business Administration cited in investopedia.com, the most common reasons small businesses fail were due to lack of effective management system followed by lack of funding, inability to retain talents faulty business model, unsuccessful marketing initiatives etc. Even where funding and talents seem not to be the problem, some businesses have failed solely due to poor management of financial and human resources.

From the first industrial revolution to the fourth, corporate leadership has engendered new meaning impacted by socio-economic changes. Across periods of human evolution, the economic mode of production and the social relations of production have changed, and businesses and entrepreneurs have had to change or refine their leadership and management models at one point in time or another.

The continuing technological revolution and the increasing globalization of business and economic activity does not only cause intermittent market disruptions across ages but also dictates particular leadership and management style necessary for a firm to adapt to a new competitive landscape.

In the last twelve decades, corporate leadership and management have transitioned from ‘’command and control’’ approach to ‘’people-centric’’ model, and now managers have increasing demand to develop tech-skills and the capacity to transform in the cloud. Also, from the great financial crisis of 2008 to the outbreak of Covid19 pandemic in 2019 the global economy has been on its transition from web2.0 to web3, and corporate leadership has been centred on digital-data and blockchain.

Generally, business survivability and sustainability has been associated with the type of leadership and the management structure featured by the business relative to time. Therefore, strategic leaders are expected to be flexible and broadminded with regards to the design and implementation of the management structure.