How to Align Leadership Goals with Business Strategy

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership lately, and specifically leaders I’ve worked with over the years. Generally leaders are bucketed into one of two categories, tactical or strategic. Both are essential to a company’s success but those who effectively bridge the gap from tactical to strategic tend to see more opportunity for promotion and growth. I’m a big believer that unlocking strategic thinking involves honing three essential competencies: acumen, allocation, and action. Develop your acumen by understanding your organization inside and out, allocate resources wisely with a focus on alignment, and drive impactful action through effective communication and execution. - Acumen (how you think). Start by assessing your organization’s current context, both from an internal perspective (culture, purpose, processes, etc.) and external perspective (market trends, customer behavior, competitive landscape, etc.). Then get comfortable sharing your valuable insights with your team and key stakeholders. Finally, look for novel approaches to the problems and opportunities you identify. - Allocation (how you plan). A strategic mindset entails the ability to constantly focus and refocus your resources, the courage to make trade-offs and tough decisions, and the willingness to ensure that your use of resources always aligns with your goals and pushes you forward. - Action (what you do). Preparing a strategy is just the first step; how you implement it determines your success. Implementation depends on collaboration and execution. So focus on sharpening your communication skills to deliver your messages effectively (listening to feedback when it arises), and keep your team on track by measuring its performance along the way. What do you think? There are so many incredibly smart people on LI so if you have a top strategy for enhancing one of these key competencies please share your insights below! #StrategicThinking #Leadership #BusinessStrategy

🎯 Taking Steps for B2B 2025 Success: Aligning Teams with Long-Term Company Goals In complex B2B marketing, it’s easy to get lost in short-term deliverables and lose efforts alignment with long-term company goals. Many end-up being overloaded, missing deadlines, addressing last-minute requests, and not achieving their full potential. To drive meaningful growth and personal development, teams need more than tasks. They need ownership and alignment with a clear roadmap. When team members have clear objectives tied to the company’s strategic goals, and build plans 6-12 months ahead, they can better manage distractions and focus on what truly matters. This isn’t about limiting agility; it’s about aligning efforts with long-term objectives, and enabling teams to exceed expectations. In my experience, giving marketing teams clarity on strategic objectives and having forward-thinking plans have enabled them to: 1.      Prepare in advance and avoid any delays by anticipating what’s needed 2.      Prioritize effectively what needs to be done, focusing on high-impact activities 3.      Be more innovative for initiatives, and deliver better-quality outcomes 4.      Collaborate and align better with cross-functional stakeholders 5.      Protect bandwidth for meaningful work, while responding appropriately to unexpected requests A well-thought-out marketing plan lies at the heart of this. Start by crafting plans that extend 6-12 months ahead, detailing key activities, resources, and measurable outcomes. These plans act as a compass, helping teams evaluate opportunities, estimate the impact of last-minute requests, and stay focused every day. As a leader, I prioritize regular check-ins to adjust these plans as markets evolve while ensuring that every team member understands how their efforts contribute to overarching goals. With a clear roadmap in place, teams can confidently align with the company’s vision and long-term impact. In addition, I also implement custom real time dashboards for each team member, aggregating data from multiple systems, so each team member can track their contributions and progress 📊. As we plan for 2025, let’s focus on equipping our teams with the tools, trust, and forward-looking abilities to align their daily efforts with long-term goals. The payoff? Sustainable growth, stronger teams, and meaningful impact 🚀. What additional approaches would you implement to balance short-term execution with long-term strategy? #Leadership #B2BMarketing #TeamEmpowerment

The one session I wish every single executive leadership team would do in 2025: Leadership Strategy Planning What is a leadership strategy planning session? We spend a ton of time (as we should) mapping out where our company plans to shift and grow with our revenue each year. We do a gap analysis on the current state of our operations and where we can enhance margin, increase our footprint, or get more efficient inside the business. As we grow as organizations, so many companies forget to also do a future state analysis of their people skills. As the complexity of an organization grows, so do they demands on their leaders. Many times, the growth of our companies outpace the growth of our leaders. The added complexity makes it harder for managers to even find time for professional growth or "training." So how do you bridge this gap before it happens? A leadership strategy does a couple of things: 1. Creates agreement upon which leadership behaviors and norms are most important to our business, our stage, our strategy, and our people. 2. Identifies gap areas in skill development for those specific leadership behaviors. Sometimes those gaps exist even at the executive level. The awareness of the gaps can help create productive conversation to close them. 3. Defines a common language around leadership for the company. Now that we've articulated what a great leader looks like in relation to our culture and our strategy for next year, we can set expectations for all leaders around those norms. It makes it easier to have real accountability in our behaviors. If you've not already finished your strategic planning for 2025, remember who will be executing the roadmap you're putting into place: your people. Aligning on leadership strategy can be the little bit of acceleration an executive team needs to better guide their teams to success. Add a half-day to your strategic planning process to talk about: 1. What leadership competencies do you think are most important to meet our strategic plan? 2. What are the biggest leadership skills holding us back from achieving our strategy next year? 3. What are tangible resources we can give our leaders to help them close those gaps? How should we be working as an executive team to close our own gaps with these competencies? DM me if you have questions about what this looks like in practice or if you need an external facilitator to bring this to your org! I'd love to hear from you all too: What do you think the hot trends will be in leadership development in 2025?

“Set it and Forget it!” Ron Popeil, an Infomercial Inventor, remains my favorite pitchman. The guy was a legend. “Set it and forget it,” might have been great for working parents and the Showtime Rotisserie. But, it doesn’t work in leadership. Leadership and strategy are iterative. I’ve been watching Executive Leadership Teams (ELTs) struggle recently at crucial inflection points. Three common needs: 1️⃣ Talent density - need more intellectual horsepower ✌️ Upgrade communication structures - yelling across the room doesn’t work anymore 3️⃣ Resourcing - too many coaches still “doing the doing” I’m giving this topic a lot of mindshare because what got us here won’t get us there. From a practical perspective, I think, the job of the ELT is to drive “5 A’s” for the company: 1. ALIGN on the strategic direction. This means everyone is clear on the written strategy and their role with clear objectives. The plan should live in a Project Management tool. Specifically ask: 🫵 What problem needs to be solved? Align on the kink in the hose stopping throughput 🧐 What do we expect to happen and by when? Algin on the result 🤔 What are the alternatives? Align on options and priorities ☑️ What must be true for this to be successful? Align on the order of operations. 2. ACT boldly and decisively within your functional area of responsibility. This means your team is aligned on the objectives and has the Tools, Time, Training, Talent and Tenacity to achieve them. 3. Cultivate an ACCOUNTABLE performance-driven culture where your team executes and achieves the company’s goals, metrics, and KPIs. 4. ASSESS the individual, departmental, and executive performance. Ruthlessly determine what is working, what isn’t, and, most importantly, why. 5. ADJUST the strategic plan every 90 days. Re-create alignment and communicate the strategy and objectives. Go again. Love to know what subject is keeping you off the Dean’s List? 🎓 (Seriously - it’ll help upgrade my thinking on this topic) PS - This process is true even if you’re a company or department of one. 🚀 #leadership #strategicplanning #teamalignment

You are at the office, everyone is home. ☕️ You are stressed about the business wondering how to get everyone else to care... - You set goals, no one cares - You explain the situation... to no avail How do you get people to care!? Here are 10 ways to assist 👇 What you are looking for is Alignment. A buzzword which, until last year, I thought was useless... until I desperately needed it. Below are 9 ways to move your team into alignment 1. Clarity Make sure you clearly, and constantly articulate - where the company is going - why its going there - what its going to take - how everyone benefits from getting there This should be done continually, once is not enough. 2. Set Thematic Goals Set something new and aggressive every 3-6 months that everyone can get behind. Medium term goals like this bring unity to the team. 3. Collaborate on Plans Working on detailed plans together, after everyone knows the long term goals, creates buy in from the team. 4. Ownership Make sure it is clear what everyone's role is, both at the company, but also in terms of achieve the vision and the medium term goal. Clarity for each individual and their contribution is paramount here. 5. Regular Review We all drift, doubt, wonder... pre-empt this by setting continual reviews with each member of the team. Give them honest feedback, find good and bad to share with them. 6. Be Consistent The vision, the goal, the plan, the cultural principles... all need to be communicated daily. Make them part of your company lingo and use them until you're mocked. 7. Strategic At All Levels By encouraging strategic thinking, and inviting it, at all levels, you will get more people feeling they have ownership over outcomes. 8. Metrics Find ways to measure progress towards the goals. This helps people quantify both wins and losses; allowing them to self correct. 9. Innovation Encourage each person to take full ownership of their role, their team, their output, their metrics, and their actions. Encourage them to "make changes" to get better results. Allow them to experiment and make things better. Give room for mistakes. Each of these should build a more cohesive culture and get everyone on board.