Skills of Strategic Leadership - Jay Holstine Vistage Chair

a central theme of Jay Holstine’s CEO peer groups. 

“Our members are positioning their companies to move strategically in volatile times.  Honing the critical skills involved was the focus of our workshop,” Holstine said. “Our 18 Dallas-based CEOs, from non-competing businesses, gather monthly to hear an expert speaker, share insights, and improve their networks,” Jay Holstine said.

“Today’s business landscape provides challenges, and new opportunities, especially for leaders with the skills to capitalize on it,” Holstine said. “Our Vistage group members are always striving to improve their strategic skills and take their companies to the next level,” Jay Holstine added.

“Our CEOs came away with unique objectives, tailored to their style, strengths, industry and company. Each of the skills are essential: Using them in coordination with each other makes the difference. 

Lean in and Look Ahead

“We are developing more sophisticated forecasting, and improving CEO perception of business threats and opportunities on the horizon,” Holstine said. 

“How you perceive the landscape and your business is key: The 19^th century railroad conglomerates saw themselves as ‘railroad companies,’ instead of ‘transportation companies,’ and failed to adjust in the changing social landscape with new needs and technologies. Likewise, a lot of food corporations are late in noticing the trends toward healthier choices.  Strategic leaders, however, are continually scanning the horizon, looking for new needs, developing trends, or signs of change.

Expand your Knowledge

“Anticipating new market trends requires seeking out new data, and asking new questions,” Holstine said. “This led one CEO to develop broader networks, where he learned more about the changes in his competitors, and his customers’ needs. This inspired him to align with a new channel partner, which revealed the need to diversify the company’s product portfolio to become less vulnerable to economic cycles, and ultimately, a stronger and more stable level of success,” Jay Holstine explained.

“Some of our CEO members plan to incorporate these activities into the business simulations and test runs they are doing in order to better understand their competitors, their markets, and channel partners,” Holstine shared.  

Re-think and Re-imagine your status quo

“Our CEOs agreed that now, more than before, it is critical to encourage alternative points of view, and explore new approaches to ongoing processes,” Holstine said. “Our members shared examples of finding that the leadership strategies and methods that had been successful 5 years ago were not commensurate with new technologies, perspectives, work-styles and market expectations,” Holstine said. “They agreed can’t just plug the same data into the same plan anymore -- you have to get outside the office, expand your network, learn more, and innovate,” Holstine shared.

“Our group learned that improving your strategic decision making starts with forcing yourself to challenge your accepted plan, invite alternative views and gather more options. It’s important to put your current plans through the same rigorous justification that you use to vet a new plan,” Holstine said. 

Dig until you get to the Root cause

“It’s easier to address the symptoms of a problem, but we learned that when you continue to look further, and ask new questions, it can lead to a whole new horizon of opportunities: one example detailed the long-accepted small percent of defect on a flagship product. Most company leaders said this was unavoidable. Seeking out the cause of the small but recurring problem led to finding a new supplier, with better technology, who was also able to serve additional product needs, and this reduced the company’s overall costs,” Holstine shared.

Venture out of your comfort zone

“One CEO shared that going outside their usual decision circle, to a more diverse group of experts, led him to more accurate findings about what really inspired their customer loyalty,” Holstine said. “This enabled him to set new directions in marketing and packaging, which led to an increase in sales,” Holstine relayed.

“The best leaders listen to their advisors, and also to experts, and people outside their circle. They want hear the negative responses of naysayers early, and they’re also interested in the objective, third-party perspective,” Holstine shared. 

Seeking out and interpreting patterns

“We learned new skills to improve interpretation, including methods to gather more options, and more perspectives, before going with a course of action. This helps you ensure that you are making decisions with fresh eyes, and using quantitative proof to confirm your decisions, with due diligence,” Holstine said.

Better Decision-making

“Rarely does a CEO have all the information, confirmation or time that he would like in making executive decisions,” Holstine said. “Our speaker shared valuable new skills in making tough calls, decisively and quickly. Strategic leaders have an intuition built by experienced gathering of quality information, over time. They are able to quickly assess various options at the outset, and methodically work through the choices,” Holstine shared.

“Outlining short-term and long-term objectives, and weighing the trade-offs, CEOs can develop a practiced decision-making process that balances a disciplined logic with expediency,” Holstine said. These leaders are working toward making the most informed and timely decisions possible.

“Pilots, experiments and hybrid solutions have their attributes,” Holstine said. “A few years back, an acquisition in a low-cost market might protect a company’s competitive pricing and market share. Leaders today are gathering more input, and analyzing new variables and solutions, such as a strategic alliance or joint venture, in addition to more creative options on the acquisition,” Holstine said. 

“In order to have a more accurate view of costs or unintended consequences, consider dividing large decisions into phases, or components,” Holstine said.

Building Support and alignment

“We talked about the various stakeholders and influencers who have competing needs from the project outcome, possibly competing agendas, and even different time zones,” Jay Holstine shared.  “We discussed some great advice from strategic leaders on getting this critical buy-in among a disparate group of stakeholders,” Holstine said

Communicate. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

“A CEO and CFO announced a corporate initiative, only to find a lack of awareness and no support. They had to backtrack and ask a lot of questions, to learn that his division heads and colleagues did not fully understand the benefits, or strategy,” Holstine shared. 

“They met face to face with division heads, and shared vital benefits and growth plans. With positive responses, they were able to ask for participation in the next phases. They incorporated stakeholder inputs into the plan, and continued updating them and aligning with their needs, ultimately finding the needed support. Without this kind of detour, the overall benefits would have been much greater,” Holstine added.

“We discussed examples of networks of communication, and programs that encouraged employee involvement, communication and teamwork, and how these fit into the goals of strategic leadership,” Holstine said.

“It’s important to stay on top of the process, and monitor how people are responding to the initiative. It’s also critical to recognize and reward the supporters and team players who make the progress possible,” Holstine said.

Sharing Insights

“Innovation, growth and improvement come from gathering new knowledge from your setbacks, as well as successes,” Holstine said. “We discussed how CEOs can promote a culture that helps employees benefit from lessons learned in the course of work,” Holstine said.  

“Failures often provide more valuable insights than successes.  Our workshop shared examples of companies with more punitive cultures that lead people to hide failures and to blame others,” Holstine said.  “We agreed that more damage comes from the fear of being blamed for failure, and hiding problems,” Holstine added.

Improve your perspective

“Our CEO members shared some successes that came from considering new intelligence. Strategic CEOs are highlighting these teams that gathered more direction, adjusted, or re-engineered projects, and ultimately produced more comprehensive, creative and longterm solutions,” Holstine said.

“Good leaders measure outputs regularly, to see where decisions, projects and campaigns have excelled and areas they can improve. They explore the root causes, identify additional options, widen their sources of information, consider expert advice, and adjust plans for success,” Holstine said.  

Intelligent Change brings New Value

“A company’s leaders had longstanding connections to ventures in which they had invested years of effort. But retaining underperforming ventures had prevented them from expanding on stronger, better positioned ventures with true potential. Although they benefitted from change, many leaders would not want to share their previous short-sightedness. However, these leaders opened up about their commitment to more business-wise strategies, which led to updated perspectives, company-wide, producing more intelligent decisions, and forward-leaning actions,” Holstine said.

“Our Vistage CEO group came away with some valuable skills to share with their management teams and work on incorporating,” Holstine said. “Becoming a strategic leader entails figuring out where and how they can improve, in each of the topics and areas discussed, and improving in each area,” Holstine said. “The advantage of our Vistage group is that each member is accountable in becoming a more strategic leader,” Holstine said. 

“This is just one way that our CEO peer group helps Dallas business leaders attain higher levels of productivity and business excellence,” Jay Holstine said.  

CEO Peer Group Advisor / Chair - Jay Holstine

Jay Holstine is a CEO Peer Group Advisor / Chair at Vistage Worldwide, Inc., in Plano, Texas. He leads a group of 16 high-performing executive leaders who meet monthly provide comprehensive CEO coaching services. These are CEOs who are going beyond their current achievements to inspire growth in those they lead, and in their companies, to drive lasting improvements and make their communities a better place.