Leadership strategic thinking preferences and how strategic changes are implemented in professional services firms

Abstract

It is known that approximately 70% of strategic organisational initiatives fail. The business environment is becoming increasingly complex and ambiguous and continuously relies on strategic thinking initiatives to remain competitive. Therefore it has become vital for leaders to be well-versed in strategic thinking elements and organisational change systems and how to apply the two concepts simultaneously. A qualitative study focused on the lived experiences and perceptions of leaders involved in strategic thinking. A total of 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with selected leaders. The leaders are all employed by a company, Company X, which is currently undergoing organisational change. The findings contributed to the development of a conceptual model. The model consists of the leaders lived experiences juxtaposed with academic literature. The model suggests which elements of strategic thinking leaders have learned based on their experiences. These elements resemble the properties of Liedtka's (1998) strategic thinking model which consists of systems perspectives, intent focused, thinking in time, hypothesis driven and intelligent opportunism. The model similarly indicates which of the above strategic thinking elements the leaders use during different phases of organisational change. Kotter's (1995) eight-step organisational change model was utilised for this research. The leader's experiences and perspective on the above literature models were also verified. The model further demonstrates the different leader-to-stakeholder relationships required and leveraged during the different organisational change phases. The study aims to guide leaders on vital strategic thinking elements and how these elements are to be expended during diverse organisation change stages with distinctive stakeholders as required to ensure successful organisational change implementation.