A strategy involves a series of manoeuvres and steps that are undertaken to achieve a specific goal, and a leader is a master of such manoeuvres and steps. Simpletons are averse to strategies. All they want is something to be done for them. If they do accept the responsibility, they do not want anything that involves more than one step.

Seven Things a Leader Needs to Know about Strategy

1. Every great or important destination requires a number of steps to get to it. A good leader must accept the reality that no great achievement involves just one step. It will involve a series of steps, a series of manoeuvres or stratagems. The series of steps, manoeuvres or stratagems is also known as strategy.

2. Bad leaders are interested in taking only one step towards a goal. Bad leaders are a little better than the worst leaders because they take at least one step towards their goals. But most things are not achieved by taking one step. Many people just want to take one step towards their goals. There are few things, if any, that can be reached with one step. The Bible says that '… things work together for good.'

Many things work together to make one thing beautiful or successful. Many things are combined in a particular way and with particular timing to make nice stew or soup. It is not just having one thing (good meat) that will make you have nice stew. Many things will work together. Because one step gets you almost nowhere, the one step that is taken is often seen as not having worked. Because of this, people who have taken the one step of praying or one step of fasting or one step of sowing a seed have often complained that the one step does not work.

3. The worst leaders will take zero steps to achieve anything. The worst leaders live in constant expectation of something to be done for them. Their mentality is that someone owes them something and someone has to do something for them or to them. This is often the mentality of people who have been slaves before. It is also the mentality of people who have been colonised and used to others thinking for them. Their understanding is that something has to be given to them or handed over to them.

Such leaders constantly request aid, describe their woes, lacks and efficiencies and hope that it will touch the heart of a philanthropist somewhere. Even after many years, they do not perceive that their woeful plight and pathetic situation does not touch the hearts of many people in this selfish world. It takes years for zero-step leaders to realise that no one will freely pour out his hard-earned wealth into their laps. Such leaders are excited to receive wealthy visitors because at the back of their minds they expect something to be given to them or done for them.

4. The greater the goal the more the manoeuvres and steps you need to take. The greater and more impossible the goal is to you, the more steps you will have to take to get there. To achieve great goals, you will need to take many steps.

5. Each step in a strategy requires faith and patience. The first few steps require the most patience and the most faith in the wisdom of your strategy. If one of the steps you are taking is to have your quiet time, you need a lot of faith and patience to consistently have your quiet time, believing that it will have an effect on the outcome of your life.

'That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.' (Hebrews 6:12)

Indeed, may we continue to pray for our leaders to become men who take as many strategic steps as need be. May we graduate from being zero-step people or a one-step people.

theaol@ymail.com By Dag Heward-Mills