Strategic Management and Leadership Theories: On the road to becoming a CEO

Michael Knight

Masters of Business Administration, University of Maryland Global Campus

MBA 670: Strategic Decision Making

Dr. Dermod Wood

April 24, 2023

This is the beginning look at the respective leadership theories to becoming a Chief Executive

Officer (CEO) of an organization or business. The strategic employment of management and

the supporting values, traits and abilities of the leaders within an organization create the

competitive advantage or disadvantage that the CEO is attempting to wield. Strategic

management itself encompasses; the organization’s vision, short- and long- term goals steeped

through sustainability and resilience, and the culture of a company’s employees. It is these

factors that separate

Using leadership theories enables an understanding to influence and create catalysts to

morph the culture of the company’s employees to aid in accomplishment of the strategic

goals. The intertwining of these theories with strategic management is what CEOs are

responsible for embodying. I have found this to be true in my own efforts in reshaping a

company that lacked trust in leaders and micro-managed time that inhibited resilience

amongst the team.

The main focus for any organization is the driving force of planning for long term

success. This is about developing a resilient organization that can respond to the challenges of

sustainability (Reeves, et. al, 2022). This resilient organization will need to change from a

linear methodology, which is challenged time and again within the global circular economy to

encompass factors such as; fierce competition for resources, market share and marketing

strategies which have comparable thin margins of success (Circular Economy, n.d). The

change from linear economic models into the circular economy generates increased benefits

towards overall sustainability, whereas ignoring these impacts only heighten competition and

barriers. There are forces that shape industry competition and the deliberate need for

management to forge a strategic plan that can be led into action is critical to success (see

Figure 1).

Figure 1 (Porter, 2008)

Within every organization the very real threats of substitutes for products or services

can lead to the desire to have the strategic plan’s focus to improve upon the organizational

outputs (Porter, 2008). Strategic management must be steeped in industry analysis that can
impact these changes through focused efforts and coincide with three important

responsibilities that are inherent within the organization; monitoring external threats and

opportunities, formulating the strategy to employ, and implementing those for future success

(Strategic Leadership, n.d.).

A true level of competency from the CEO is required to help determine long term

priorities tied to objectives based on a comprehensive understanding of client and customer

needs. This information is a conglomeration of the team to assess overall weaknesses,

strengths through competitor products and activities, the consumer core competencies and

comparing likely outcomes by evaluating and implementing the strategic plan (Strategic

Leadership, n.d.). Some CEOs utilize the situational approach to emphasize contextual factors

and nature of the competitive environment to help increase effectiveness. Often the integrative

of blending two or more strategies can be seen in complex organizations; whereby helping

others to expand from intra-individual and dyadic to group and organizational level to focus

on influencing members to leverage human capital within and without the organization to

accomplish the major changes within their strategic plan (Perspectives in Leadership, n.d).

Overall, the adaptability of the management plan will lead to the resilience and

sustainability of activities that impact end goals from among the organization, which is firmly

rooted in the CEO’s direct and pervasive leadership. This leadership is steeped in theories that

allow for considerations and guidelines that are tied directly to the values, traits and abilities

of its most senior manager.

Barriers to effectiveness

As CEOs struggle to remain effective and balance strategic management, they can

often run into common barriers. These barriers create decisive points that position the CEO at
the center of gravity for organizational propellant which is a recognition that transformation

can sometimes be a multi-year journey, or if not conducted properly the inverse happens;

organizational decay (Anthony, 2008). An example of someone who has overcome these

barriers would be Robert Reffkin, CEO of Compass; a residential real estate brokerage listed

within Fortune’s top 500 companies. Robert has built this company through inspiring his team

to work together break barriers while working through challenges, he tackles these challenges

head on much like the activist he is, such as the time he challenged himself to do 50

marathons in 50 states to raise monies for charities. When a leader has a firm way forward to

mitigate the principal problems that are commonplace amongst organizations it can propel the

team to greater effectiveness.

There are four large barriers to effectiveness which need to be addressed in order to

gain measures of success. These four barriers can be seen to have multiple faucets that can

either be stand-alone barriers or a conglomeration of festering events that require a firm and

decisive leader to overcome.

First; communication, both with customers and internal to the organization. This

seemingly innocuous barrier generates friction if left alone, when your organization is

changing being proactive to your stakeholders and transparent through reasoning and detailed

context helps your employees, and business partners have a sense of fidelity (Reeves et al.,

2022).

Secondly, product or service valuation; this can be detailed through perceived and

actual value based on studies and cross-market analysis, by focusing on product and profit

information will help in shaping the short- and long-term target allocations. If these valuations
are inaccurate or not properly projected, the entire product line could be subject to severe

losses, recalls or outdated materials that creates severe losses.

Third, resources and expansion efforts; the amount of agility a company can provide

while introducing products or services will need to have a high level of flexibility to evolve

within the marketplace, this also helps with justification and can help calibrate resilience

efforts not already established (Eller, 2021).

Fourth, the leadership and effectiveness of the organization will need to navigate the

entangled conceptual framework of the bureaucratic and administrative functions within the

entire social system and work to challenge knowledge beliefs and preferences while

simultaneously increasing access to information and coordinating activities across the

organization (Complexity Theory of Leadership, n.d).

Leadership Theories

There are four layers of pervasive leadership that a CEO could employ, while it is easy

to attribute layers to strategic management; it would be better suited to call them leadership

theories. It is important to clarify that management is no substitute for leadership, but one

cannot have leadership without management. There are values, traits and abilities that a CEO

must have to meet their performance objectives, leadership concentrically moving outward

while simultaneously developing a resilient organization that can respond to the challenges of

sustainability. These are the expectations that a board of directors typically have when

choosing a new CEO.

The theories start small, with intra-individual theories that focus on individual

influence and interactions; they morph into dyadic theories that builds trust through

cooperative exchanges and feedback. Sometimes, these theories capitalize through onboarding
programs, having supervisor presence and leader’s capturing names and listening willingly

(JV Verable, 2016). As the company evolves and workplace culture takes root, social capital

in the form of commitment gives employees confidence and the desire to accelerate; healthy

competition from teams start to arise to generate sustainability and adaptability. The leader is

able to propel to group-level theories and organizational level overviews that influence

collective efficacy and innovation by external initiatives, the focus now is on sustainability

and becomes the moving target to accomplish (Perspectives in leadership, n.d.).

Situational Relevance

While my own organization is struggling with leadership as we undergo an employee

transition, we do have a manager. The task manager currently gains enough compliance that

we are meeting basic and minimal requirements, but has not entered into the current social

system that is in place. The traditional approach to focus on cooperative relationships still

only garners interactions through exchanges or lasting vestiges of personal influence that does

little to provide a return on the social capital expended (Relational Leadership, n.d.).

Additionally, there is a deep-rooted sense of ambivalence and conflict from within

what should be complementing departments. Each department believes that their way of

leading, as it culminates into decision points, is best served when they can unilaterally make

decisions without considering new information that might change the situation. With the

interim manager attempting to avoid conflict, key decisions are not being made that degrade

the organizational effectiveness and our current competitive advantage is lost (Managing

Ambivalence, n.d.).

What our organization needs is leadership not management. We require an agent of

change to establish transparency in actions, competitive vision, and workplace cultural change
through trust. These actions are the descriptors of what we are and how we operate that will

allow employees at all levels to generate positive expectations for ourselves and fellow

employees that directly translate to our customers. By shifting to a state of control with honest

and constant communication it will break through the remaining vestiges of resistance and

replace the social complexity with fidelity in actions.

Demonstrated Leadership Case

understanding but also practical application and experience within an integration into

changing situations. I found myself with an opportunity to demonstrate some of these

principles and work through both the trait and behavior approach, to help establish trust

within the company. These prospects were given to me as I was on the path towards

leadership to help hone and refine the intra-individual and dyadic concerns that I previously

had struggled with.

On the road to becoming a CEO or other leader it is important to understand the

magnitude of change and inherent lack of trust that permeates the current culture. The

elasticity of a change-trust relationship helped to alleviate the resistance when I took over the

company, this is due to the last leader being fired for incongruent behavior (Management in

Change and Trust, n.d.). The lack of trust was apparent and I had to work hard to create

shared and distributed leadership opportunities that valued employees to solve problems and

make decisions that were decentralized. This decentralization helped to provide autonomy to a

team that previously had none, creating an immediate culture of trust (Shared and Distributed

Leadership, n.d.).

With a change of business practices through organizational level the focus could be on

creating synergy within the group and smaller team dynamics by helping them work through
resilience on team actions. I underwrote and owned any missteps and showered them with

accolades when they performed above expectations. This helped to create a sense of

responsibility and built resilience among their work. These actions reinforced to me that

leadership is more than managing people, it creating a community of people that understand

why their part matters and encourages them to trust others that share their workload.
 References

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