A strategy is a series of manoeuvres and steps that are undertaken to achieve a specific goal. This is a call for the leaders in our nation to become masters of strategic steps.
Seven Things a Leader Needs to Know about Strategy
1. A leader needs to know that every great or important destination requires a number of steps to get to it.
A good leader must accept the reality that no great achievement involves just one step. It will involve a series of steps, a series of maneuvers or a series of stratagems. The series of steps, maneuvers or stratagems is also known as strategy. Do not become someone who is averse to strategies!
2. The worst leaders will take zero steps to achieve anything. The worst leaders live in constant expectation of something being done for them.
Their mentality is that someone owes them something and someone has to do something for them or to them. This is often the mentality of people who have been slaves before. It is also the mentality of people who have been colonized and have become used to having others think for them. Their understanding is that something has to be given to them or handed over to them.
Such leaders constantly read speeches requesting aid or describing their woes, lack and inefficiencies, hoping that it will touch the heart of a philanthropist somewhere. Such leaders are excited to receive wealthy visitors, NGO directors, singers, football stars, western diplomats, because at the back of their minds they expect something to be given to them or done for them. Even after many years they do not perceive that their woeful plight and pathetic situation does not touch the hearts of the men of this selfish world. It takes years for zero-step leaders to realize that no one will freely pour out his hard-earned wealth unto their laps.
3. Bad leaders are interested in taking only one step towards a goal.
Bad leaders are a little better than the worst leaders because they take at least one step towards their goals. But most things are not achieved by taking one step. Some people will take the step of prayer. Many will take one step of fasting and praying every year. Many church members will take one step of sowing a seed in order to be prosperous. But one step does not go very far. As you sit in your seat reading this article, if you were to take just one step how far would you get? But that is all people want to do. They just want to take a step towards their goals. There are few things, if any, that can be reached with a step. The bible says that “… things work together for good.” Many things work together to make one thing beautiful or successful. Many things are combined in a particular way and with a particular timing to make a nice stew or soup. It is not just having one thing (good meat) that will make you have a nice stew. Many things will work together.
Because one step gets you almost nowhere the one step that is taken is often seen as having not worked. Because of this, people who have taken the one step of praying or one step of fasting or one step of sowing a seed have often complained that the one step does not work.
4. The greater the goal the more the maneuvers and steps you need to take.
The greater and more impossible the goal is to you, the more steps you will have to take to get there. To achieve great goals, you will need to take many steps.
5. Each step in a strategy requires faith and patience.
The first few steps require the most patience and the most faith in the wisdom of your strategy. If one of the steps you are taking is to have your quiet time, you need a lot of faith and patience to consistently have your quiet time, believing that it will have an effect on the outcome of your life.
That ye BE NOT SLOTHFUL, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Hebrews 6:12
6. Many strategies to get somewhere or to achieve anything can be broken down to four steps. With four steps you can get to any destination or person in this world. Try it!
7. Become a man who takes as many strategic steps as needs be. Graduate from being a zero-step person or a one-step person!
Indeed, there is a call for the leaders in our nation to become masters of strategic steps! Do not become someone who just wants something to be done for him. Do not become someone who does not want anything that involves more than one step. Become a master of strategic steps!
Culled from “The Art of Leadership”
www.daghewardmillsbooks.org
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By Dag Heward-Mills