A leader cannot work like an analyst. Time-intensive data crunching must be replaced with decisive critical thinking. A leader should learn the skills of a strategy partner to arrive at rapid solutions using judgement and logic, and implement the idea and generate results.

Day in the life of a leader

Controls his/her time. Makes numerous decisions while attending meetings, reviewing progress from teams, and meeting clients. There is very little time spent alone.

Decisions without detailed analyses

Does not have the time and is not required to spend hours, days, and weeks locked away by themselves completing an analysis. Yet, they must make the correct decision.

Expected to

Analyze issues in minutes or an hour or two at most, and make numerous critical decisions with imperfect data, and implement the decision to generate a banked benefit.

Partner-level skills needed

Partners don’t complete weeks of analysis before planning the study and draft recommendations on even the most complex engagements. A strategy partner designs the overall recommendation in a day, using reasonable hypotheses and business judgement. Their thoughts are provided to the engagement team as direction for the analyses needed to support the recommendation. It is a counterintuitive approach.

This is the skill a leader needs

The ability to analyze an issue and make a decision with very little time, using just a sheet of paper and a pencil, that is logical and can influence his/her peers and subordinates. Leaders who can make decisions only after weeks of analysis, that they have personally led, are learning a process that they will struggle to directly apply in their career.

It is not possible to allocate the time and resources needed to make decisions like an analyst. A leader makes decisions using an approach, like a strategy partner, that arrives at the correct answer using a rigorous process of critical thinking. Yet, rigor does not require weeks of time and analysis.

Leaders are rewarded when they

• Implement the right decision
• Bank the returns expected

Reviewing analysis

A leader must be able to check work they have never seen before, critically analyze the rigor of the approach and the recommendations, zoom in on the key problems, and provide feedback in a matter of minutes during a meeting.

This is what strategy partners do. They arrive weekly to review the work of the team and must quickly understand and offer direction to work they are seeing for the first time.

Leaders

• Never work alone
• Implement through others
• Influence employees, clients, and investors
• Use the work of analysts

Guide for leaders

Leaders do not manage a business, unit, team, product, etc. Leaders are always building or growing a business. A leader who can only manage a business but cannot grow a business is soon replaced. To grow a business, a leader is always making a set of decisions.