‘Strategy is not really a solo sport – even if you’re the CEO.’ 

- Max McKeown (English researcher and author who writes on innovation, strategy and leadership) from ‘The Strategy Book’

If, as a leader, your interaction with a potential high-value customer or client organisation leads you to a place where it’s necessary to develop a specific strategy (be that to win its business, or to produce a solution or other form of offering) – don’t do it in a vacuum.

Strategy – if it’s to be solid and well-rounded – requires multiple inputs . . . in terms of experience, information, and perspective. Any of these elements could prove to be the critical one; the difference between victory or defeat – or whatever form of measurement represents success or failure in the context of this relationship.

Central, therefore, to producing a fully considered, comprehensive strategy is having all parties whose input is of value, present (and motivated) during the strategy development phase. If a certain individual or group of people represents the best – or the only – source of essential information, but they’re not involved in the formulation of the intended approach, quite obviously the resultant strategy will be bereft of their essential guidance.

Exclusion (whether intentional, by oversight, or as a result of “non-availability”) isn’t an option for the competent leader and strategist.

A leader must demonstrate both the intelligence to identify the best resources to move his or her organisation towards a critical objective, and the strength to galvanise and optimise those resources in pursuit of that goal.