ABSTRACT
Strategic leaders need to be self-aware, digging within themselves to levels and making choices which are difficult to reach when handling the imperatives of the close-in. The strategic leader should understand ‘the other side’, meaning the enemy, the competition, the working culture of the newly acquired subsidiary, or the negotiating partner for example. Key formative factors in strategic analysis include history, geography, culture and leadership. In addition – and notwithstanding the unnecessity to always agree – good strategies provide threads to the future for all involved; this is one implication of ‘a sense of common humanity’, although the imperative is practical as well. Strategic leaders do create new realities, at whichever level they are given the opportunity to operate. Great strategic leaders invariably embody greatness by virtue of their imagination and ability to look ahead. The military revere certain strategic visionaries of whom by far the greatest, living about 2500 years ago, was Sun Tzu.
