Just landed in a strategy role?
Here’s what no one tells you - but you need to know to thrive.
Stepping into a strategy leadership position is exciting - and daunting. Suddenly, you’re expected to shape direction, influence senior leaders, and drive impact across the organization. Most new strategy leaders quickly realize that success in this role is less about having the perfect answer and more about building the right capabilities, relationships, and processes.
Here are a few realities that matter more than most job descriptions admit.
- Strategy Is a Team Sport
No strategy leader succeeds alone. While strategy consulting partners can bring valuable perspective, long-term success depends on building internal alignment and shared ownership. Your role is as much about enabling others to think strategically as it is about crafting plans yourself.
- Vision and Mission Set Direction - Not the Path
Vision and mission explain why your organization exists and what it aspires to become. But business strategy defines how you’ll get there. Clear strategic choices, tradeoffs, and priorities are what turn aspiration into action.
- Strategic Planning Is Only the Beginning
New leaders often focus heavily on producing a strategic plan. In reality, strategic planning is the easy part. The real work happens afterward during execution - aligning resources, monitoring progress, adjusting course, and keeping strategy alive in everyday decisions.
- You’ll Spend More Time Facilitating Than Designing
Much of your impact will come from asking good questions, guiding discussions, and helping leaders work through complexity. Strategy leadership is as much about facilitation as it is about analysis.
- Uncertainty Is the Job
You won’t have perfect data. You won’t have full certainty. Effective strategy leaders get comfortable making informed decisions amid ambiguity - and helping others do the same.
Build Your Strategy Foundation
Strong strategy leaders invest in continuous learning. Developing skills in foresight, execution, and strategic thinking makes the role more manageable - and more impactful.
At LBL Strategies, we support new and experienced strategy leaders through practical, holistic training:
- Mastering Foresight: Scenario-Based Planning
https://www.lblstrategies.com/scenario-based-planning/
Learn how to anticipate change and explore multiple futures. - Mastering Strategy: Strategic Management Performance System (SMPS)
https://www.lblstrategies.com/training-and-certification/strategic-management-performance-system/
Build a disciplined system for planning, alignment, and execution. - Strategic Thinking Professional Development
https://www.lblstrategies.com/training-and-certification/strategic-thinking-professional-development/
Strengthen everyday strategic judgment and decision-making.
Great strategy leaders aren’t born.
They’re built through practice, perspective, and continuous learning.
Ready to accelerate your impact as a strategy leader? Explore LBL’s programs and start building the capabilities that make strategy work.