Preparing For the Next Level
I’ve often heard of leaders getting feedback from their boss when they’ve been passed over for a promotion. They’re often told, “You need to be more strategic”… whatever that means!
There could be a number of possible explanations for this… but you can’t always rely on your boss to explain exactly what she means! Let me give you a few suggestions for how you could interpret this:
Sometimes, it’s because your presentation and communication skills are lacking. Any deficit here may hamper your ability to explain concepts at the right level. I know leaders who haven’t mastered business communication, so they end up going into excruciating detail with anything they present.
Becoming buried in too much detail may be interpreted by senior people that you can’t see the forest for the trees, and it may feel like a series of disconnected thoughts that don’t align, and don’t have any logical flow.
As Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”.
A good presenter, with strategic thinking ability can tell a story that flows, connects, and makes sense, irrespective of the complexity of the subject matter. If your presentations are so burdened with detail that they lose the main points, you may be labeled as “not being strategic enough”
Talking of subject matter complexity, another reason may be your inability to understand complex concepts, and translate them into actions. This is largely a cognitive skill that requires a certain level of intellectual horsepower… It’s about being able to recognize patterns and apply your experience and learnings from one situation to other relevant situations… Not everyone has this ability!
I hate to think of any limitations as immovable obstacles, but this is one that can be pretty difficult to overcome. Your abstract reasoning capability can probably be improved over time, but is largely predicated on your baseline IQ, which is hard to shift outside of a predetermined range. Sometimes this can be interpreted as “not being strategic”.
Another sure indicator of not being strategic is if you’re unable to relate and communicate your specialist expertise in ways that others can understand.
A CFO who worked for me once was presenting the quarterly results for our business to a group of blue collar workers in a remote site. You can imagine my amazement when he started to explain why the mark-to-market movements in our forward portfolio of electricity derivatives was excluded from the underlying EBITDA figure.
Being able to simplify complex concepts so that other people can understand your specialist area is an important quality in a strategic leader.
Sometimes, it’s just insufficient breadth of knowledge. If, for example, you’re an HR professional, but can only talk from your own point of reference, that may be seen as limiting.
In talent management processes, when senior management is trying to identify potential leaders, they look to people who can see beyond their own portfolio – who have breadth of vision across a whole range of subject areas.
For example, if an HR person can think about, understand, and integrate factors from marketing, operations, asset management, and finance into their own strategies and programs, that person is much more likely to be considered “strategic”
There’s no doubt that sometimes, the line “you need to be more strategic” is just a convenient (and abstract) excuse to say “I don’t think you’re management material”.
But there are ways to overcome even the most limiting impressions that your boss may have of you.