The Achilles’ Heel of Strategic Management: Strategic Leadership in a Chaotic Environment

Abstract

The main view of strategic management thinking is analysis of external and internal environmental conditions, and determination of the enterprise’s strategies in this context. In this manner, enterprises not only position themselves but also take positions. Enterprises also specify and implement their strategies according to their positions. The person who is responsible for the management process—which includes creation, implementation, and evaluation of the strategy of the enterprise or strategic business unit—is the strategic leader. The most important function of the strategic leader is that they assume a decisive role in the strategic management process. The leadership behavior they exhibit in the implementation of strategies is the main determinant in achieving success. However, it is thought that a strategic leader who adopts the mechanical point of view of the past will not be successful in today’s complex and chaotic environmental conditions. The main reason for this is that the business world is a complex, dynamic, and nonlinear system. An analysis made according to circumstances does not result in complex and nonlinear systems. In the story of Achilles, whom Homer described in his work, his mother’s efforts were unable to protect Achilles from death. In a strategic management process, if a strategic leader continues to think in a traditional way and exhibits modernist management behavior, he or she may meet the same fate as Achilles.