Leader as Strategist

We are now in the time of Leader as Strategist — where leaders demonstrate the ability to forecast disruption and pivot in response while taking care to inspire and motivate a team to embrace change.

This phase in leadership builds on the foundation created by the “Leader as Coach” movement. Yet strategy skills ask different things of leaders.

Continuous feedback for an agile strategic leader isn’t about performance reviews. It’s about how they rapidly take in new data, interpret weak signals, and improvise solutions with their team in real time.

A 2021 study by Mannucci and colleagues looked at how leaders improvise at work and identified three levels of competency:

• Copy: Leaders copy what others are doing. This is often the default mode for inexperienced leaders seeking safety in imitation.

• React: Leaders stay alert to cues from their environment, responding through familiar scripts — attack meets defence, push meets pull.

• Generate: Leaders move beyond reaction. They anticipate, innovate, and create responses that didn’t exist before. They manage their own emotions in the face of disruption and guide others through it.

The Generate Improvisation Skill is the signature move of the Leader as Strategist. It’s the capacity to create, not just copy; to sense, not just respond.

And like any strategic muscle, it’s strengthened through disciplined practice.

In my work with executive teams navigating complexity, this capability becomes visible when leaders stop asking, “What should we do?” and start asking, “What’s emerging and how do we adapt together?”
That’s the real pivot point: from strategy as plan to strategy as practice.

Modern strategists aren’t just analysts or visionaries. They’re sense-makers, pattern-spotters, and improvisers who hold paradox with grace. They act decisively while staying open to being wrong. They move between foresight and hindsight, using both to inform their next step.

Because in complexity, leadership isn’t about predicting the next move.
It’s about creating the conditions for the next move to emerge.

So ask yourself this week:

• Where am I copying when I could be generating?

• How do I create space for my team to experiment safely?

• What signals am I tuning into and which am I tuning out?

The strategist leader doesn’t chase certainty.
They design for adaptability.

“Strategy in complexity isn’t about having the best plan.
It’s about cultivating the courage to improvise with intelligence.”
— Dr. Isabella Allan