Strategists come in different types and breeds. Some know it all or are full of ideas, while others prefer to involve their people or focus on maintaining the status quo. And still others have developed an active distaste for the whole word strategy. Throughout my years as strategy consultant and mentor, I’ve worked with a broad variety of executives and leaders. Based on my experience while working with them, I’ve discovered five distinct types of strategist, including their key strengths and weaknesses. What type of strategist are you?
What Is A Strategist?
Unlike well-known terms like leader, executive, or manager, it is not immediately clear what a strategist is and what they do. The term is less familiar and not too many people call themselves a strategist. Therefore, let me briefly define the term based on some commonly available definitions.
According to Wikipedia, a strategist is “a person with responsibility for the formulation and implementation of a strategy.” The Cambridge Dictionary describes them as “someone with a lot of skill and experience in planning, especially in military, political, or business matters.” And, according to Merriam-Webster, a strategist is simply “a person skilled in strategy.”
Thus, a strategist is someone with both the responsibility and the skill to formulate and implement an organization’s strategy. This could be a Chief Strategist or a Chief Strategy Officer. But in many cases, especially in smaller and mid-sized companies, it is the CEO who is the main strategist. Skilled or not, it is them who have the primary responsibility for formulating and implementing strategy. And they do so in five distinctively different ways.
Type 1. The King Strategist
The first type is the King Strategist. This type is the know-it-all strong and independent Chief Executive, having a clear vision of where to take the organization. They are capable thinkers and forward-looking. Compared to the rest of the organization and to their fellow executives, they stand out because of their integrative and comprehensive understanding and clear ideas about where the organization should be heading.
Strengths: the main strength of the King Strategist is that they have strong, and well-founded ideas about where exactly they want to take their organization the next couple of years. And often they are right.
Weaknesses: the most important weakness of this strategist is that they can lose touch with the rest of the organization. They are too far ahead and expect too much of others, thereby creating frustration. This can make them lonely at times too since they have no equals to talk to.
Type 2. The Servant Strategist
At the other side of the top-down spectrum, we find the Servant Strategist. Where the King Strategist acts mostly alone and is usually the only or key strategist in the organization, the Servant Strategist follows a more participative, or even democratic approach to strategizing. Instead of defining the strategy themselves, they prefer to keep their own views to themselves, at least initially, and rather want to hear what others in the organization are saying. Accordingly, with this strategist, strategizing is largely decentralized and a shared responsibility.
Strengths: this strategist is strong in creating harmony, engagement and commitment. They are able to create a shared strategy of which many people in the organization feel ownership. Accordingly, strategy execution tends to develop relatively smooth.
Weaknesses: many employees may prefer to leave strategizing to the organization’s leadership rather than being asked to create it or contribute to it. Because they hardly share their own vision, Servant Strategists may easily be seen as weak and indecisive.
Type 3: The Elder Strategist
The Elder Strategist likes to keep things as they are. They often have been decades with the organization and have been in a leading position for a long time. They appreciate continuity and are hesitant in embracing new developments. In their view, tomorrow’s strategy should largely be a continuation of the past. They value hierarchy and are proud of their position and of their organization’s past.
Strengths: this strategist has a strong sense of history and focus on continuity. Rather than jumping on every hype, they persistently build on what the organization has always been good at and are optimistic about that.
Weaknesses: the Elder Strategist is not very open-minded and can be defensive and lose connection with internal and external developments. With their focus on tradition and hierarchy, they can also gradually lose touch with the rest of the organization.
Type 4: The Prince Strategist
The Prince Strategist is at the other end of the conservative-progressive spectrum. This type of strategist embraces change and innovation and often are themselves the main source of new ideas. They are full of creativity and enthusiasm and see opportunities for change everywhere. Working with this type of strategist is rarely dull or predictable. They always are capable of surprising others in the organization.
Strengths: their key strength is their innovative character. More than any other type, the Prince Strategist is able to spot new opportunities and bring in new ideas. They are able to share their enthusiasm and motivate others to be innovative too.
Weaknesses: this type of strategist can lose themselves and their organization in the number of new initiatives initiated. Key risks are that the organization jumps from one idea to the next and never gets into an efficient delivery mode, meaning no or limited results and a constantly changing strategy.
Type 5. The Joker Strategist
The Joker Strategist is in fact a non-strategist. They have few, if any, clear ideas about where to take their organization, and they have limited abilities to make decisions or enforce action. To hide their lack of ideas and abilities, some of them heavily use strategy concepts and tools to pretend. Or they do exactly the opposite, downplaying the importance of strategy and saying they rely on their gut feeling and that strategy is waste of time anyway. They like to joke around, trigger a laugh and stay popular.
Strengths: this type has not many direct merits. However, unintended, they may stimulate others to do better. Their weakness may trigger others to step up and take their role as one of the other four types of strategist.
Weaknesses: since this type of strategist rarely is effective, the cons are plentiful, the main ones being the lack of clear strategy and the lack of execution. Furthermore, their general ineffectiveness can be harmful for the long-term health of the organization.
Conclusion
At first sight, the King Strategist seems the ideal type of strategist. King Strategists know where they want to take their organization and have the ability to do so. Also, more than any other type, this type fits people’s general tendency to think of leaders as strong independent heroes. However, as this brief inventory of types shows, the King Strategist has its weaknesses too, and there are viable alternatives.
While combinations are possible, most strategists that I have met, are clearly of one primary type and perhaps one secondary type, but not more. And, while development from one type to another is possible, I believe such development is relatively rare and takes substantial time, since the types are strongly influenced by a person’s character.
In moving forward, the key questions for every strategist are:
- What type of strategist are you?
- Do you sufficiently leverage your strengths?
- Do you have other people or mechanisms to counterbalance your weaknesses?
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