Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization's Enduring Success (J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)) [Hardcover]

Richard L. Hughes (Author), Katherine M. Beatty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0787968676 | ISBN-13: 978-0787968670 | Edition: 1

Today’s organizations face difficult challenges in order to remain competitive—the quickening pace of change, increasing uncertainty, growing ambiguity, and complexity. To meet these challenges, organizations must broaden the scope of leadership responsibility for strategic leadership and engage more people in the process of leadership. In Becoming a Strategic Leader Rich Hughes and Kate Beatty from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) offer executives and managers a handbook for implementing a strategic leadership process that reaches leaders at all levels of organizations. Based on CCL’s  successful Developing the Strategic Leader Program, this book outlines the framework of strategic leadership and contains practical suggestions on how to develop the individual, team, and organizational skills needed for institutions to become more adaptable, flexible, and resilient. The authors also show how individual managers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive and systemic approach—thinking, acting, and influencing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If you manage anything of importance—from a company to functional area—read this book, and share it with your team. You’ll dog ear plenty of pages, and blow away your previous performance."
--Steve Wigginton, executive vice president, Neoforma, Inc.

"The authors write with authority and experience that works well to convince readers they have valuable information to convey. Their advice is specific, concrete and compelling, and the book provides many useful exercises."
--Amy Edmondson, professor, Harvard Business School

"Reader friendly and action packed.  An excellent investment in your organization’s future success."
--Graham Tillotson, group executive vice president, The Delfield Group/Enodis

"This book is required reading for leaders at all levels within your organization. Crisp, concise, and practical, Hughes and Beatty have provided a roadmap that will enhance both effectiveness an sustainable competitive advantage."
--Jon Abeles, senior vice president, Catholic Healthcare Partners

"A refreshing addition to the writings on strategic leadership… it suggests, in immediate practical ways, how each organization member can become more engaged and more influential in developing the strategy that will shape their organization’s future."
--David Campbell, Smith Richardson Senior Fellow, Center for Creative Leadership

From the Inside Flap

Today's organizations face difficult challenges in order to remain competitive—the quickening pace of change, increasing uncertainty, growing ambiguity, and complexity. To meet these challenges, organizations must broaden the scope of leadership responsibility for strategic leadership and engage more people in the process of leadership.

In Becoming a Strategic Leader Richard Hughes and Katherine Beatty from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) offer executives and managers a handbook for implementing a strategic leadership process that reaches leaders at all levels of organizations.

Based on CCL's successful Developing the Strategic Leader program, this book outlines the framework of strategic leadership and contains practical suggestions on how to develop the individual, team, and organizational skills needed for institutions to become more adaptable, flexible, and resilient. The authors also show how individual managers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive and systemic approach—thinking, acting, and influencing.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (February 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787968676
• ISBN-13: 978-0787968670
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another good book to be added to your Strategic Thinkers' Bokshelf!, September 6, 2005

By 

Lee Say Keng "KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURER/TECHNOLOGY... (Ho Chi Minh City/Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization's Enduring Success (J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)) (Hardcover)

Most of the publications that come out of CCL (or Center for Creative Leadership), which I have acquired for my personal library, are seemingly well-supported by research findings & concisely written by the respective authors, who apparently hold impeccable track records in their fields. This particular book is one of them. (CCL has earned its #1 Rank in Leadership Education by Business Week).

My primary interest in strategic leadership stems from my relentless search for better understanding of the thinking processes that go inside the heads of leaders. To be more precise, the strategy formulation processes! This has been by burning passion for more than two decades.

In this book, the authors have artfully as well as logically demonstrated how readers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive & systematic approach:

- strategic thinking (Chapter 2);

- strategic acting (Chapter 3);

- strategic influencing (Chapter 4);

These serve as the synergistic driving forces. In the authors' own words: Driving strategy as a learning process. (I am actually quite tempted to use the term, `syn-vergent' instead of `synergistic' [driving forces] as the former term was originally coined by Michael Gelb, in Thinking for a Change, which means `the art of balancing convergent and divergent thinking modes, logic and imagination, reason and intuition.' In the current book under review, the authors contend that strategic thinking engages the heart as well as the head.)

With an excellent introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 6 shows how readers can apply the above approach in the broader organizational context.

Chapter 7 sums up the book: Becoming a Strategic Leader, using surfing as a metaphorical platform (I like it!) - keeping your balance while learning the best path to follow amid constantly changing conditions.

Throughout the book, the authors discuss in depth the specific competencies & perspectives related to each of the above driving forces, as well as their interdependency in producing a more wholistic (or more appropriately, `syn-vergent', as explained above) & meaningful strategy.

In conclusion as a whole from the standpoint of reader friendliness & action-packed learning, I rate this wonderful book a 5.

So, readers, please add this book to your Strategic Thinker's Bookshelf.

Attention Readers: To complement as well as to reinforce your understanding of Chapter 2 of this book, please read `Choosing the Future: The Power of Strategic Thinking', by Stuart Wells.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for developing strategic leadership skills, May 28, 2007

By 

R. R. Chapa (Monterrey, Mexico) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization's Enduring Success (J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)) (Hardcover)

The book written by Richard Hughes and Katherine Colarelli continues with the tradition of the Center for Creative Leadership of producing tools and information based on solid research and experience.

The book proposes a model of strategic leadership composed of three large competency clusters: strategic thinking, strategic acting and strategic influencing and then it explains and analyze each of these clusters, providing, not only a theoretical explanation of the different skills but also examples, tools and activities to develop them.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Becoming a Strategic Leader, March 16, 2005

By 

Christopher J. Evans - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization's Enduring Success (J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)) (Hardcover)

Becoming a Strategic Leader is a focused and wonderfully written work for those who believe in approaching challenges in a strategic way. The authors, trainers and researchers at the internationally acclaimed Center for Creative Leadership (www.ccl.org), use a framework familiar to strategic planning processes to improve the likelihood of obtaining results in enhancing one's leadership effectiveness. The content is solid and full of real life examples and applications. This book will appeal to those who are drawn to a logical approach to problem solving but should also engage the heart of others seeking to add structure to their own development or that of their teams. If you liked Execution, and Good to Great, you should like this as well. It is well worth a look.

Dr. Christopher Evans

www.christopherevans.org