Leadership is a tough gig. If it feels harder than it used to, you’re not imagining it!
Leaders today are operating at a friction point. Expectations are expanding, resources are often constrained, and the pace of change is relentless. At the same time, teams are expected to be more autonomous, adaptable, and self-directed than ever before.
What both leaders and employees need right now is not more pressure but more clarity.
The essence of strategic leadership
Strategic leadership is not just about articulating a compelling vision. It’s about turning that vision into something people can actually act on.
Many highly capable leaders assume their intent is as clear to their teams as it is to them.
In practice, this assumption often creates misalignment. Leaders run toward the target, while their teams struggle to follow — not due to lack of capability, but lack of shared understanding.
Talented people are left behind not because they can’t contribute, but because they haven’t been brought along in a way that works for them.
Strategic leadership requires deliberate translation.
Storytelling, simulations, and collaborative planning sessions help make strategy tangible. One useful analogy comes from chess: grandmasters plan several moves ahead, while also maximising each move in the present to keep their options open. Strategy is both long-term intent, and short-term adaptability.
Making strategy tangible for your team
Clarity doesn’t come from more presentations. It comes from leaders doing a few things consistently and well.
In practice, leaders who create clarity tend to do the following:
- They translate strategy into priorities.
Teams can answer three questions without hesitation:
What matters most right now? What can wait? What are we explicitly not focusing on? - They make trade-offs visible.
When priorities shift, leaders explain why. This helps people adjust without losing trust or momentum. - They check understanding, not agreement.
Asking “What does this mean for your role?” surfaces misalignment early and prevents silent drift. - They reinforce direction through everyday decisions.
Meetings, resource allocation, and problem-solving all point back to the same strategic intent.
These behaviours sound simple. They aren’t. But they are learnable — and they make the difference between strategy that exists on paper and strategy that actually delivers results and moves the organisation forward.
HR anchored in business strategy
HR creates the greatest value when it’s tightly anchored to the strategy of the business.
When HR work becomes disconnected from leadership priorities and commercial reality, it loses traction. When it’s aligned, it becomes a powerful driver of focus, execution, and resilience.
This belief led me to develop the LevelUp Pillars of Strategic HR — a practical framework designed to ensure HR initiatives actively support and deliver the organisation’s strategic goals.
The first and most foundational pillar is Strategic and Operational Clarity.
Shaping strategic and operational clarity
Clarity is not a “nice to have”. It’s a prerequisite for execution.
Simple organisational design issues — unclear reporting lines, overlapping responsibilities, siloed structures — often create disproportionate friction. These are frequently misdiagnosed as individual performance issues. Decision-making slows, accountability blurs, and collaboration suffers.
These are often low-hanging fruit.
Fixing them creates immediate momentum and lays the groundwork for more strategic work.
Strong organisational design ensures that:
- roles and expectations are clear
- decision rights are understood
- accountability is visible
- strategy can flow through the organisation without distortion
People, culture, and leadership work is never “done”. But clarity creates the conditions for everything else to work.
In the next edition, we’ll explore how aligning workforce goals and building winning cultures helps organisations move from clarity to momentum.
Thank you for your interest in people.
Rachel
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