"Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it" René Descartes (1596-1650)

About the author:

Gunter Maier was born in 1972 and studied business administration and social sciences. In his last professional position he was responsible for training and further education in an international industrial company. Inspired by his varied professional experience in adult education and the ever-increasing complexity of everyday working life, he specialized in the field of leadership development. For more than 30 years he has also been engaged in various modern and classical martial arts styles and holds various technical degrees as well as teaching and examination licences. His research approach is interdisciplinary and above all, reality oriented. In this sense he systematises and cultivates proven practical knowledge in order to make it available to modern leadership development as a holistic teaching concept.

After careful examination and research I am of the opinion that the work does not contain any infringements of copyright. Should you nevertheless believe that the copyright has been violated, please contact me by email: strategische-prinzipien@mail.de. I will try to clarify the matter immediately. Of course I am also very grateful for suggestions, comments and hints of any kind.

Bibliographic information of the German National Library:

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data can be found on the Internet at www.dnb.de

© 2020 Gunter Maier; Reproduction and utilisation, even in extracts, only with written permission of the textbook author. Special note on the exception of educational media (§60a Abs. 3 UrhG (formerly §52a Abs. 2, §53 Abs. 3)): Neither the textbook nor parts of it may be digitised, transferred, stored and posted on a network without such permission. This also applies to intranet sites of organisations, schools, universities, libraries and other educational institutions.

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ISBN 9783752692822

Table of Contents

Part 1 – The Frame

Part 2 – The Toolbox of the Strategist

Part 3 – The Workshop of the Strategist

Part 4 - PriOri – Principle-Oriented Strategy Teaching

Part 5 – The Catalogue of Strategic Principles in Volume 2

Preface

In 2008, when I was officially entrusted with the disciplinary management of employees for the first time, I was forced to completely reposition myself internally. Prior to this, for many years I had been responsible for customer satisfaction as a marketing specialist for an international group and was on the road all over the world. The way I worked at that time was always independent. I thought for myself and my work was goal-oriented and dominated by project work, whereby I always had to reconcile the needs of the customers with the expectations of the organisation. I didn't have any personnel responsibility at that time, but the projects themselves required a certain sensitive control of the interdisciplinary project teams.

Then that company put me in charge of four departments in one fell swoop with the task of bringing them together and harmonising them under one roof. As the new Head of Apprenticeship and Employee Development, I was now faced with a new project that aimed to adapt the Apprenticeship, Further Training, Toolmaking and Dual University Education departments to new parameters and, of course, to merge them into a newly created unit while taking cost efficiency into account.

The result was a very heterogeneous department structure with approx. 70 employees and additional responsibility for further training for two entire company locations. The merger of the departments was quite easy, but the management of the day-to-day business proved to be a tightrope act due to the heterogeneity, the lack of real superiors for the respective areas and the general pressure of being sandwiched between the high expectations both of management and the works council. Unfortunately, the theoretical findings of my business studies did not help me in any way. During those days I often remembered a statement of one of my professors who used to say:

"…what you really need in your profession, you don't learn in your studies …"

I then developed, probably more intuitively, a principles-oriented style of leadership and action, which enabled me to quickly jump back and forth between the different concerns of my employees and the various business matters and to quickly obtain a well-founded assessment of the respective situations. I worked more and more efficiently, the results of the department were impressive, and the regular employee surveys also confirmed that the department was also very satisfied.

In the course of my consulting function in the field of leadership development, in discussions with younger managers I repeatedly found that the balancing act between the expectations of management and employees under the real conditions of the 21st century is becoming less and less manageable and that there is an urgent need for action in order not to burn out the executives in middle management. In fact, many reported that they had not really been prepared for the demands of today's managers in the course of their training and studies, and expressed the desire for targeted further training aimed at successful interaction with their fellow human beings. Interestingly, among another group of young managers I observed a certain arrogance, which probably resulted from a (too) early transfer of responsibility on the part of management. These managers found it difficult to grasp the real events in their departments, instead they concentrated on their individual career progression. They rarely registered the unintended effects of their actions - at least this was my observation. A retiring manager, who had initially been a kind of mentor to me, once pulled me aside at a party and complained:

"… what we learned on the street, they will never know …".

I thought about these words for a long time and asked myself time and again: What was it that you learned on the street in the past? Thus I had registered the need for action, or more precisely the need for training. Soon I started looking for suitable concepts and training providers to help these young managers. The focus was always on application orientation and pragmatics. I didn't want to present any further theory.

But in the end I didn't really find what I had been looking for over the years. The existing education market offers this group of people little in the way of suitable hand tools to enable them to manage real day-to-day business somewhat stress-free. Seminars are based on too many theoretical concepts, which all too often start to waver under real conditions. I also found it remarkable that many management trainers have never headed a department themselves. I found it courageous to stand in front of a group of managers without management experience and train them to deal with their employees. For me, it was as strange as a driving instructor having no driver's licence. Furthermore, these concepts stood completely alone, there was nothing connecting them and most notably nothing holistic at all. In short, the conditions were not really ideal for a manager to acquire any of the skills required.

In 2008 another change in my life occurred, which was more far-reaching than I could ever have imagined. As part of my volunteer work as a martial arts trainer, I had long been looking for reality-based training concepts to counteract modern martial arts. I attended a karate seminar in Berlin more or less by chance. At this seminar a trainer was present, who taught us the origins and the development of modern martial arts in a very descriptive manner. This instructor was Tobin E. Threadgill, an American who was the first non-Japanese in the history of martial arts to become the legitimate head of a traditional Japanese school. I was impressed by his teaching method, especially by his ability to prepare deeper aspects for our Western understanding of learning, so that I immediately asked for admission to his school. Thus I was accepted as an official student of a classical Japanese Jiu-Jitsu school and became part of a centuries-old martial arts culture.

Here I was also forced to break with everything I had learnt and to completely reposition myself. Up until this point I had trained at the modern sports of Karate and Kobujutsu (weapon fighting) for over two decades and was of the opinion I was well trained in martial arts. However, as I delved deeper into the teachings of the old schools, I soon realised that this was not the case.

All the laboriously learned techniques and movement sequences had until then served as rather stylistic aesthetics or, at best, to win competitions under regulated conditions. In addition, the training of the mental side was limited to purely tactical aspects of the competition, i.e. a confrontation with arbitrarily fixed rules, without showing any trace of tactics or strategy. Step by step I came to understand that all this had little to do with reality. In contrast to the classical martial arts curricula the modern ones are theorised, because they were developed in times of peace and prosperity. They are basically not designed for real use. Testing under real conditions is often avoided in order not to damage the façade of the style. In contrast, Koryu styles, i.e. the old schools, had their curricula aligned solely with the conditions of reality and continue to train their students to deal with that reality.

During those years of rethinking, I was constantly reminded of a sentence from my teacher Tobin Threadgill. During the seminars he critically examined the movement sequences and emphasised:

"…I teach principles, not techniques...".

With this he taught us that we should not limit ourselves to learning and unwinding an external movement sequence, but should deal with the concepts on the underlying levels, the principles. This realisation took a long time to mature, but now I realise that my actions on a sporting level have become much more flexible, relaxed and intuitive.

Inspired by this ancient teaching philosophy with its emphasis on principles, eight years ago I decided to create a real and, above all, substantial basic concept for leadership development myself, and started the research project on which this book is based. In doing so, I set myself the maxim that the core of the research process must be oriented solely towards the laws of reality and that theoretical concepts can only serve as supplements. I wanted to avoid the dominance of the current mainstream only reproducing the existing and empirically unproven theory. Instead, I followed the principle:

"If modern science has nothing suitable to offer, then we must make use of the teachings of our forefathers."

For I am of the opinion that in our Western hemisphere the tried and tested is too quickly thrown overboard and replaced by dubious theories: a trend that Far Eastern cultures do not follow. My thoughts were more and more centred around the principles, which guaranteed success in the old martial arts, developed at a time when there was no theory in teaching. I found what I was looking for when I studied the Classics of strategy theory. I noticed very quickly that they were always writing about the same facts, namely about the principles. What was also striking was that these principles were always presented in the context of human interaction. This also suited the problems of today's executives. And so I decided to create a holistic system of real principles as a basis for modern manager training, in which I tried to decipher and disclose the code of social strategic interaction.

As the concept of the research process matured and its scope was foreseeable, I took a research break - also for family reasons - and began to apply to universities as an external doctoral student. Because of the high interdisciplinarity of the topic, I contacted professors from various disciplines; professional educators, business economists, psychologists and sociologists, but at first there was no real interest in the work. Only the contact with the few scientists from the field of strategic studies - unfortunately already emeritus - reinforced me in my project, as they were able to assess the value of the knowledge involved in it. However, for various organisational reasons - mostly due to the fact that chairs were no longer occupied or had simply been abolished - supervision as a doctoral student was not feasible at that time, so I decided to implement the research project anyway and publish it in this way. Here the reader need not anticipate any disappointment. The opposite is the case, because the lack of supervision is a sign that a great deal of pioneering work can still be done in this field of science.

This, in turn, does not mean that the project was realised without scientific support. Five people supported me with their valuable hints and thoughts, whom I would like to thank again. Prof. Dr. Markus Groß has supported me permanently in literary and culturally historical matters. Prof. Dr. Albert Stahel distinctly sharpened my senses with regard to the application and scope of the concept. Prof. Dr. Rainer Zimmermann posed the research questions and encouraged me to realise the project despite all hurdles and Prof. Dr. Lothar Auchter was my contact person for the topics ethics and morality. Finally, Jürgen Buchwald, martial arts companion and Germanist, checked the consistency of the research results at regular intervals and also checked the interim results.

The first milestone of the research project was the publication of the Forgotten Vocabulary of Strategy – A Handbook of Strategic Principles in German in 2015. Since the publishers found it difficult to recognise the potential, I ended up publishing it on my own. This decision proved to be a wise one, as it didn't take long for the book to attract attention. It was mainly the military who took an unbiased interest in the subject and from then on gave me the opportunity to publish regular articles in their magazines. From that point on these articles provided an opportunity for me to promote the book, which, in turn, gave me access to economists.

The abundance of feedback has led to many discussions on the teaching of Strategic Principles. One shortcoming became crystal clear. Figuratively speaking, the keystone in the vault of this strategic teaching was missing and this keystone was the knowledge of the way the human mind functions. So not only was it about the tools of the strategist, but also about the workshop.

And that's why I dug deep into the sciences once more and looked closely at the latest research results in social psychology, emotion research and neuroscience. This resulted in another German textbook: "Die Verborgene Grammatik der Strategie - die Logik des Irrationalen" (The Hidden Grammar of Strategy - The Logic of the Irrational), which I published in 2017.

This follow-up volume describes the functioning of the human mind and gives the learner a multitude of recommendations for action to improve his own cognitive abilities. In addition, the book deals very intensively with the irrational and works out patterns, rules and logics that strategists need to know in order to successfully use the full range of strategic instruments. As a result, the principle-oriented strategy theory, or PRIORI for short, was created from both volumes. It represents more than 2500 years of matured strategic practical knowledge from four different cultures.

Since then almost two years have passed and the two books are well established in the German-speaking world. As a logical consequence, I was asked again and again when there would be an English translation. I had often thought about it, but I repeatedly rejected the thoughts, because, on the one hand, a translation was too difficult for me personally due to the high incidence of metaphorical terms and idioms, and on the other hand, I would have preferred to cooperate with an international publishing house, which was not easy to find. At the beginning of this year, however, I decided to start a translation myself in order to address the English-speaking reader. As support I used modern translation software, based on artificial intelligence. In the person of Ailsa Boyce I finally found a suitable native speaker who reviewed and corrected all my translation work and gave it a final polish. Now I can finally present the complete English edition of this principle-oriented strategy textbook.

In conclusion, I hope that this third publication will also meet with lively interest beyond the borders of the German-speaking world and that it will not only entertain the reader, but above all provide him with real added value in order to be able to organise his professional everyday life more successfully, more efficiently and more calmly. I hope you enjoy studying the textbook.

Gunter Maier, November 2019

Part 1

The Frame

1. Introduction

1.1 The Structure of the Book

This monograph presents the summary and at the same time the English translation of the two books published in German - Das Vergessene Vokabular der Strategie - Handbuch der Strategischen Prinzipien (2015) and Die Verborgene Grammatik der Strategie - Die Logik des Irrationalen (2017). All contents are the result of independent, open-ended and interdisciplinary research that can ultimately be assigned to Strategic Studies. At no time has any research been funded, ideologically influenced or in any way directed by organisations. This allowed the author to move freely through the associated disciplines and not be influenced by preconceptions, dogmas or desired results. The development of this teaching was based solely on the laws of human nature.

The author has three personal approaches to the strategy. To start with he is a management expert and therefore familiar with the studies of strategic management. In addition, he is a sociologist and approaches the topic using the latest research results in social psychology. But the most important approach is probably through his knowledge of the teaching methodology of classical martial arts, which, centuries ago, developed and implemented extremely sophisticated concepts of strategic teaching. Today much of this has fallen into oblivion or has been rejected, because the zeitgeist is forcing specialisation and modularisation as the way forward - a false path as it turns out.

In essence, this book is a textbook written for the self-taught as well as for teaching at educational institutions - therefore a strict scientific basis has been preserved. The structure does not correspond to the chronological course of research, but to didactic principles. The reader is systematically acquainted with the needs of the present time, gains a deep insight into past teachings, understands how to systematically reconstruct, generalise and bring together relevant knowledge and finds a holistic curriculum of strategic teaching at the end. Great importance was attached to consolidating the knowledge and to structuring it in a didactically logical order. The handbook is thus divided into five parts which contain a large number of chapters and subchapters. These are relatively short but compact and each deals with a specific aspect of strategic teaching.

Part 1 looks at the parameters of the entire research project and describes how and why the author deals with the topic, i.e. it describes the current situation in business and research and from this derives the unaddressed training needs of managers and leaders. Part 2 looks at the development of a universal and exhaustive toolbox for the strategist and how it can be put to good use. Part 3 continues to deal figuratively with the workshop of the strategist: This means his mind. Only in a well-structured and tidy workshop can all tools be used properly. Therefore the strategist needs a profound understanding of his own mental circumstances. In addition, he must be shown his personal potential. Part 4 once more detaches itself from the individual and deals with the principles and peculiarities of practice-oriented strategic teaching and brings together what has been written so far to form the principle-oriented strategy teaching - PRIORI. Finally Part 5 contains the catalogue of Strategic Principles. In alphabetical order, each individual principle is divulged and illustrated with all its attributes. Since ideally this handbook will accompany the reader until the end of his life, the catalogue should serve as a reference book to assist when resolving new or complex situations.

1.2 The Dawn of a New Era

"If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it."1

... is the opening quote of this chapter. It is used in the context of modern quality management to emphasise the necessity of key figures or key figure systems which should form a valid basis for entrepreneurial decisions. This is valid for all areas in an organisation, such as human resources, production planning, marketing, development, and so forth. Everywhere data is generated and summarised, statistics are created, processes are monitored and consequently optimisations are effected. This is done to increase efficiency and effectiveness. It also makes sense, because profit-oriented companies as well as non-profit organisations and public sector organisations have to do business and for this they need reliable data.

But the quote also has a bland aftertaste. What about those facts that cannot be measured? Does the quote mean that we should only focus on measurable things? Or does it mean that we should think about how to develop suitable measuring instruments to reduce "white spots"? The latter is the path that makes more sense. In fact, measuring instruments to make more complex issues transparent outside the standardised processes do exist. In particular, the social sciences have developed methods to measure employee satisfaction or the success of leadership development activities. Such methods, however, are costly and time-consuming and usually have to be carried out by external experts, as most organisations do not have the necessary knowledge to apply them in-house. In practice, the question of cost-benefit considerations always arises when there are decisions to generate further key figures beyond those of quality management, which is always required. In addition, it must also be mentioned that socio-scientifically collected data can never achieve the degree of precision of, for example, a tolerance deviation indicator in a process control system. This is in the nature of things, since people are at the centre of the investigations. Therefore socio-scientifically collected indicators always contain a certain range of interpretations, which is all too often a source of irritation for the rationally oriented quality manager.

In practice, it can thus be observed that organisations tend to lose sight of human factors. We prefer to concentrate on the clear key figures. In fact we also speak here of F&F: facts and figures. It is not uncommon for such a disregard for social factors to lead to disaster at some point and no one knows what is going on because no one has had the events on their radar. It should be noted that the organisations or their managers tend to orient themselves too strongly towards their key figures and too little towards people. A fundamental motivation of this book is therefore to also give these managers knowledge that will help them find their way beyond F&F more successfully.

This motivation is driven by developments in the 21st century. Two concepts have become increasingly apparent in specialist media for some time now. On the one hand there is the well known term of the VUCA-world2. This describes the parameters within which managers operate in the 21st century. VUCA clarifies the fields of action of today's managers in comparison to the "orderly" conditions at the end of the last century; VUCA tries to point to what has changed and thus also addresses the demands made on modern managers, and they must now face up to these new demands.

A second term is to be found more frequently in the context of political leadership, even though its transfer to the economic context is permissible and even necessary. It is the concept of postfactual time. This term describes a phase in which people no longer allow themselves to be persuaded, influenced and controlled by rational arguments, but increasingly follow emotional motives. The VUCA world thus describes the framework that affects people, and post facto describes the way in which people perceive, decide and act within this framework. This means that in the future not only those in the political world, but also those in the business world will be able to rely less and less on its indicators to make wise decisions. New weighty factors are being added and these are difficult to measure. It is becoming more and more difficult to keep an eye on objective reality or to be able to grasp it in all its facets at all.

This book is based on the assumption that today's decision-makers are not trained for what lies ahead. This assumption is based on the author's many years of professional experience as a manager, but also as a person responsible for education, with his ability to anticipate the needs of the future and ultimately with his knowledge of alternative training concepts that counter those mainstream training concepts in business. Such training concepts are holistically oriented and suitable for turbulent times. They train common sense instead of intelligence. These concepts originate from the past and are from times when the world was - as it is today - in disorder. The decision-makers of that time, however, found a way to get along or to be able to come to clever decisions. Today, in the Western world, it seems strange to orientate ourselves towards antiquated knowledge, when we are moving in a highly technological and future-oriented society. In order to make the reader receptive to forgotten knowledge, the following example should do the trick.

The English capital suffered from a severe epidemic in the 1850s. At that time London was already a very progressive metropolis, characterised by the progress of world trade and industrialisation. The city itself developed into a conurbation. In the city, especially around the district of Soho, there were almost 4,000 deaths by 1854 due to a cholera epidemic3. It was John Snow, a doctor, who through his intuition and systematic research was able to prove that the epidemic was caused by contaminated drinking water and not, as suspected, by fumes in the air. People took their drinking water from public water pumps in the city. When Snow dismantled the pump's handle on Broad Street, the epidemic came to a halt. Snow had located the source of the epidemic and also proved that the cholera had reached the people through the drinking water. But how was the drinking water contaminated? The reason for this was an unsuitable, partly non-existent sewer system or open sewers. Waste water and drinking water had got mixed. In the following years, after Snow had died, an elaborate sewer system was installed throughout the city to rule out any dangers of this kind for the future. If you go back 2000 years in history, you can see that a sophisticated sewer system was already known in Roman times. The whole of Rome had a well functioning water supply and disposal network. It took the outbreak of a serious epidemic in London for a technical solution to be recalled that had been forgotten over the centuries of the Middle Ages. This analogy proves very clearly that it can sometimes make sense to seek solutions to a problem of the present by studying the past. What all this has to do with the training of managers will be explained step by step in the following chapters.

1.3 The Perspective of Social Interaction

Although the topic at hand is highly interdisciplinary, it can essentially be assigned to the subject of strategic studies. This scientific discipline is primarily concerned with conflict and war research and thus mainly supports political and military sciences. In addition, however, it has always formed foundations which have been helpful to economists in their research. However, in the middle of the last century a kind of decoupling process took place and economics developed its own strategy theory, which dealt in particular with concepts of strategic corporate management4.

The perspective of this work is not geared towards a specific orientation of strategic research, but rather takes an umbrella position and views strategy in general from the perspective of social interaction. This is justified by the origin of the term strategy, which derives from the Greek word strategós - "commander", which in turn is composed of the elements stratós - "army" and agein - "lead, drive"5. The task of the commander was to assert his own interests in war by suitable means and methods and to overwhelm the opponent. War without enemies is not possible. Logically it follows that in this field of action there are always at least two participants, who usually act against each other, and whose actions also influence each other. In order to remain consistent with the ancient Greek view in terms of terminology, the acting participants in the course of the book are each described as the PROTAGONIST (the main or first actor) and the ANTAGONIST (the opponent). The SYNERGIST also acts as a supplementary figure to be understood as the comrade-in-arms of the protagonist, i.e. he supports the action. All three terms originate from ancient Greek drama6. If you follow the logic of interaction, any action that does not involve a direct antagonist is not genuine strategic action, but rather planning or programming respectively.

However, both types of action can be assigned to strategy in its usual sense, as they require basic strategic knowledge and may lead to social interaction at a later point in time 7. In order to grasp the main concern of this book, however, it is necessary to gain a clear understanding of the actions in which interaction actually takes place or does not take place.

The focus of this research is therefore primarily on the actual social interaction and goes on to follow the understanding that strategy is not a linear, but rather a free-flowing process without a real end, which is determined by the mutual action of those acting. For this reason, the actual course of action is difficult to predict. This does not mean that planning activities have no significance. Every good strategist plans his actions and thereby tries to include the options of the antagonist, but in the rarest of cases will the course of action correspond to the original planning and will the protagonist thus be forced to adapt his actions due to changing combinations of actions, or, if necessary, give up the original planning completely.

In general, this book deals with the complex question of how strategists can optimise their actions in social interaction. It is irrelevant whether this interaction takes place in a military, professional, family or everyday context. To anticipate one finding of research, the underlying mechanisms of human action are always the same. Thus - The Forgotten Vocabulary of Strategy - lays claim to a universal basis for all disciplines dealing with human action.

1.4 For Whom is this Book Written?

This book is written for decision-makers. The term "decision-maker" is initially very general. Decision-makers bear responsibility and must make wise decisions for the benefit of their organisations. On the one hand, they have to consider economic interests, but on the other hand, they also have to consider human factors. Of course, both are in a complex context. The generic term decision-maker can now be further differentiated into manager and leader. Managers manage complexity according to definition, leaders manage change8. The manager does not necessarily have leadership responsibility, there are many positions that do not dictate this, but the leader, on the other hand, is clearly characterised by leadership responsibility, since - as the definition expresses - he must guide his employees through change, and this change is not only to be found in change management projects; no, it is now ubiquitous as organisations undergo constant restructuring. Change is something that many people do not participate in voluntarily. Especially when you have grown fond of vested interests, you are reluctant to part with them. The leader therefore has to deal intensively with human factors if his actions are not to fail. But managers also have to deal intensively with human factors, perhaps not with employees, but with stakeholders, i.e. interest groups that participate in the manager's work. This is especially the case in project management.

For many years, the management of human factors was not sufficiently addressed in the curricula of universities. Only in the last 15 years has there been an increased focus on this subject through the teaching of so-called soft skills, conflict management knowledge, etc. It is, however, the author's conviction that these newer educational activities cannot actually cover current needs and certainly not those of the future. It makes no sense to coach another training module or to learn another technique: Today's managers have been confronted with so many concepts, theories and models that they easily lose track of them all. This book is about something fundamental. It is about nothing more and nothing less than clear and rational thinking and thus the optimal use of cognitive resources.

Clear thinking is not a theory; on the contrary, it is pure practicality. The Classics of strategy, for example the Chinese General Sun Tsu (ca. 544-496 B.C.), the Spanish Jesuit Balthazar Gracian (1601-1658) or the Prussian philosopher of war Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831), dealt very intensively with it and produced masterful textbooks which can still be used today. Clear and ideology-free thinking was conveyed in strategic studies and there is nothing to prevent this from being the case again today. Although the number of chairs for strategic studies around the globe has fallen sharply, literature is still available so that it is accessible to those interested in education.

This book is therefore written for decision-makers, managers or leaders who want to become more familiar with people and their actions and improve their cognitive performance. In this sense, it is of course also aimed at strategy teachers who train the afore-mentioned group. An interest in the topic of strategy is beneficial, although an academic background is not absolutely necessary. The knowledge conveyed by this book is also universal, because strategic teaching is comprehensive. It is therefore irrelevant whether the reader comes from an economic, political or military context. Knowledge is unrestrictedly transferable. Although the economy is an important point of reference for the author, he always looks beyond the horizon and examples from other areas are included. Of course, those interested in strategy in general are also invited to take a closer look at the topic. As regards universalism, everything described in this book can be applied to all areas of life, because it is ultimately about human action.


1 Kaplan R. / Norton D., p. 21

2 see Benneth N. / Lemoine J.; ed. note: The acronym VUCA was generated in American military circles at the end of the 1990s, but is now established as a fixed term in many areas. The four letters stand for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The four characteristics describe the new framework in which societies and organisations find themselves. Strategic planning and action has become many times more difficult than in the past, since reality as a basis can hardly be grasped objectively.

3 see John Snow Bicentenary

4 see Mintzberg / Ahlstrand / Lampel (1), p. 19

5 see Spengler, p. 34 f

6 see Duden, Protagonist / Antagonist / Synergist

7 see Paparone p. 309 ff; ed. note: Paparone captures four different areas of strategic logic - one programmatic, one planning, one participatory and one reflexive area. The two latter areas are decisively dominated by social interaction.

8 see Kotter J., p. 4

1.5 From Leader to Strategist

The assertion was made that today's leaders are not trained for what awaits them in the future. It is not difficult to substantiate this statement. You only have to take a look at the training concepts of the last few decades and their underlying theories. The term leadership development has become established for the training of managers.

The subject of leadership development is extremely complex. There is a large number of theories and models, different approaches and also a multitude of didactic concepts which try to shape the development process of a leader. Moreover, despite modern quality management, it is difficult to prove the effects of educational interventions, so that there is little clarity as to which adjustment screws need to be turned at all in order to adapt the training of managers to new parameters. So the first thing to do is to break down this complex mixture, make it transparent and examine it. Since the human factor is at the centre of attention, the social science perspective should also be taken into account and its methods and instruments should play a leading role. It now makes sense to take a deeper look into history, because leadership development is not a new phenomenon, but is basically as old as human society and has been the subject of constant discussion over thousands of years. The phenomenon of the VUCA world is not new either.

From around 1840 the first leadership theories were established, sometimes also referred to as leadership schools. At first there were the so-called Great-Man theories. These claimed that leaders could not be trained, but only found. Leaders were identified by special characteristics that formed in the course of their development process. The Trait Theories at the beginning of the 20th century were specifically dedicated to these characteristics and classified them as the basis for a systematic search for a leader. The Participative Leadership Theories emerged around 1940. They shifted the focus from the personality traits of the leader to his dealings with employees. Around 1950, Behavioural Theories were developed. They brought the relationship between manager and employee to the fore, with the general aim of improving performance. From about 1960, the focus was on flexibility; within the framework of Situational Leadership Theories, the different parameters were seen as decisive determinants dictating the behaviour of the leader towards his employees. In the Transactional Theories of the 1980s, rationality was strictly the basic assumption. The interaction between the two parties, the manager and the employee, was based on a contract that covered any respective motivation and regulated any exchange. The Transformation Theories of the late 1980s tended to move away from the individual and consider the long-term development needs of the organisation itself, i.e. they derived the necessary individual behaviour from this9.

This short list brings the leadership theories of the Anglo-Saxon world into a temporal framework. Over the decades, these theories formed the basis for the leadership training of companies in the Western world. However, the impression should not be created that the list is complete. On the one hand, there is a completely different view in other cultures of how leadership training should be conceived; on the other hand, there are many other concepts, such as dialogic leadership (Hardenberger Modell) or virtue-oriented approaches (the virtue of leadership - Copenhagen Business School), which have never been included in the midst of established theories. So there is a large number of theoretical concepts that serve as a basis for training, and we must not fall into the trap of thinking that the most recent ones are predominant. The current leadership models of organisations, i.e. the specific teaching concepts and their curricula, refer to a wide variety of theories: any purity in theoretical thought processes is not to be expected. Incidentally, this factor is also evident in the multitude of leadership styles, sometimes also referred to as leadership roles, which are classified within the framework of training models. If a manager wants to be classified in a certain style category, rather than be helped, in the end he will be confused. More than 20 different styles can be put together purely from those theories known, from authoritarian to democratic, from democratic to laissez-faire, even the leadership styles defined by Max Weber (bureaucratic to autocratic) in 1922 still prevail.

The field of leadership theories thus resembles a wild growth rather than the result of well-founded, systematic and constructive research, as is the case in the natural sciences. What is striking is that no theory is holistic, each one focuses on a sub-area and this should be interpreted as a major weakness, for the suppression of other important aspects can quickly lead to theory-induced blindness (to reality) and cause unintended effects, which are then also suppressed. The impression also itself suggests that empirically gained data has a lesser significance than faith approaches, so that for decades theory has dominated over empiricism and thus over practice. Other sciences prefer the opposite approach, where findings from practice are intended to guarantee a constant further development of science. In order to shed more light on this fact, the following section will examine the extent to which empirical (success) data on leadership development is actually available.

Empirical research in this case means evaluating the impact of leadership development measures, i.e. determining whether the training measures are successful and meet the needs of practice. In other words: Is it possible to train managers for the benefit of the organisation and the employees within their respective parameters? This undertaking is anything but simple. Although the organisations now have sophisticated quality management systems, the subject of management training cannot be covered by standardised performance measurement systems. The measures are too individual and the data generation is too complex, so that impact assessment must be subject to evaluation. Evaluations are measurement procedures derived from the social sciences that allow matters of this kind to be recorded by means of individualised evaluation designs, and statements to be made regarding cause and effect10. Evaluations are costly, but nevertheless such reviews of leadership development measures have been carried out predominantly in the Anglo-Saxon economic area for decades. The findings generated and respective data should serve to provide an overview of the matter.

The method of creating an up-to-date overview from the various findings is called Systematic Review 11, and one of these has taken on the evaluations and studies of the past 15 years. The aim was to find out to what extent the positive effects of management development measures can be proven and which findings could have a positive influence on the future training of the relevant target group. The result was sobering. The studies identified a large number of problems that make a well-founded evaluation difficult. Factors that demonstrably have a positive influence on leadership development were identified only to a limited extent. It turned out that, for example, mentoring as a personnel development instrument or the personal responsibility of the training participant had a positive effect on the success of the measures as a determinant, but the value or even the superiority of a leadership theory itself could never be verified12. We therefore come to the conclusion that not one of the many leadership theories could be proven nor could evaluation research itself contribute to generating the data necessary for the further development of this branch of science. Incidentally, one of the studies considered expressed this dilemma as a metaphor in its title - the search for the holy grail – that is the title the author gave to her scientific studies13.