About JSL
The Journal of Strategic Leadership (JSL) provides a forum for leadership practitioners and students of strategic leadership around the world by publishing applied articles on topics that enhance knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon of strategic leadership at all levels within a variety of industries and organizations.

The JSL is published in electronic format and provides access to all issues free of charge. [subscribe]

Editor's Note
WELCOME to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Strategic Leadership (JSL). This first issue includes the top papers submitted during the final year of the students' doctoral journey through the Doctor of Strategic Leadership program. I am thankful to the grading professors who serve as JSL editorial members: Sergio Matviuk, Jay Gary, Myra Dingman, and Corné Bekker. I would also like to thank the JSL reviewers: Gary Ewen, Gary Oster, Richard Gribling, Ray Perren, Marcus Bieschke, and Sharon O'Hara for this selection and the guidance they provided to the authors. I am also grateful to the production staff, Julia Mattera and Billy Mims, and Ashleigh Slater on the editorial staff for all of their support in making this first issue of the Journal of Strategic Leadership a reality. We believe that students studying strategic leadership have something of value to offer the leadership academy and have produced the JSL as a logical outcome of this belief.

Please Note
Views and opinions expressed in the articles published in the Journal of Strategic Leadership (JSL) represent each author's research and viewpoint and do not necessarily represent JSL or its sponsors. JSL and its sponsors make no representations about the accuracy of the information contained in published manuscripts and disclaims any and all responsibility or liability resulting from the information contained in the JSL.

Leaders' Unmet Needs Can Precipitate Power Abuse in Relationships with Followers
Bonnie Banks

Wellington Feyer, IT project manager of Davis International, agreed to resign his position amidst a flurry of accusations ranging from endangering the safety of employees to various forms of harassment. The purpose of this exposition is to highlight how Wellington Feyer's behaviors manifest as indicators of his unmet needs. According to David McClelland, individuals' basic human needs are acquired over time, shaped by life experiences, and divided into three categories: achievement, affiliation, and power. Leaders' needs define the abuse of power as a significant organizational concern. While leaders generally resist accountability mechanisms, they are essential for maintaining employee confidence and leader credibility. Leaders can utilize the Thematic Apperception Test to recognize their unmet needs and avoid the misuse of power. (Note: This is a fictional account used to illustrate leadership principles.)
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One Nanosecond from Obscurity: Extinction or Creative Fulfillment of an Idea
Barry A. Doublestein

Every discovery is one nanosecond from either extinction or creative fulfillment. Understanding how to maximize the potential for success should be the desire of every strategic leader. Ideas find their substance in associations made from acquired bits of information that are tested for validity through a rumination process. Brain activity adjusts to detect and sort out errors, resolve conflict, and re-orient attention. Strategic leaders look for ways to manipulate environments that are the most fertile for the discovery process. Besides being committed to new ways of learning and barrier removal, successful creative leaders are counterintuitive thinkers, who look at the same things as others and see new things. Strategic leaders look for ways to insert themselves in the creative process to maximize the potential for success.
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Knowledge Management for a Postmodern Workforce:  Rethinking Leadership Styles in the Public Sector
Daryl Green

This paper explores the nexus of knowledge management and contemporary leadership theory within the public sector. The postmodern values embraced by the replacement cohorts (Millennials and Generation X) for the retiring Baby Boomers are in direct conflict with traditional leadership theories, thereby reducing the attractiveness of governmental employment. Today, the federal government, as a bureaucracy, is very rigid in its methodology. Yet, the postmodern workforce thrives better in a flexible, fluidic environment. Two leadership styles, bureaucratic and transformational, are evaluated to determine which is preferred in dealing with the public knowledge management system in the 21st century. The paper concludes with a discussion that highlights strategic implications for researchers and practitioners. The study is significant because a massive organizational shift will happen globally in the near future. This effort contributes to further exploration into the application of leadership competencies in the public sector.
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The High Cost of Apathy: Why Leadership Coaching is Needed in Health Care
Steven M. Hays

Investment in management and leadership infrastructure, or more notably a lack of investment, has had a significant and adverse impact on the health care industry over the last 20 years. As a result, health care is at a crossroads. During this time, a human resource crisis has been building in health care that continues to intensify year by year and is negatively affecting not only the accessibility of health care but the quality of health care as well. For the health care industry to move beyond this crisis, executives must invest in developing an effective management and leadership team. This begs the question: What can health care executives do to build a strong infrastructure? One solution that must be considered is the utilization of leadership coaching in health care.
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Strategic Thinking in Fast Growing Organizations
Merlin Switzer

Executives in fast growing organizations are challenged to keep up with growth as they guide their respective organizations into the future. This article focuses on case studies of four executives in fast growing organizations who use strategic thinking and, to a lesser extent, strategic planning to manage their respective organization. Even though these organizations are in different disciplines representing non-profit, public, and private sectors, they use multiple methods to conduct strategic thinking and communicate the vision to internal and external stakeholders. This article provides leaders with insights into strategic thinking by defining the concept and providing background to understand its growing relevance. Based on the experience of the four executives, leaders will gain practical ideas on how strategic thinking can be successfully employed to gain foresight on where the organization needs to be in the future and how to communicate the vision to help move the organization in the appropriate direction. Imagine your congregation experiencing a 50% increase, growing from 1,200 to 1,800 in just 6 months, or that your city grew from 11,000 to 40,000 residents in 7 years. What challenges would that kind of growth bring? How do you lead a fast growing organization into the future? These are real examples from organizations that are challenged to deal with growth today, but whose leaders understand they must keep an eye on the future.
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Creativity and Innovation: The Leadership Dynamics
Emmanuel Agbor

This paper explores the important role of leadership in the innovation process of organizations. It argues that while culture, strategy, technology, and other management tools are important in generating effectiveness in the 21st century, creativity and innovation are what drive organizational success in many sectors. However, for creativity to take place, leaders must actively implement strategies that encourage it. Therefore, leadership is the catalyst and source of organizational creativity and innovation. In essence, for organizations to be able to achieve constant innovation, leaders must establish an environment conducive to renewal and build organizational culture that encourages creativity and innovation. Organizational creativity also depends on how leaders encourage and manage diversity in the organization, as well as develop an effective leadership structure that sustains the innovation process.
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The Cosmopolitan Servant Leader
Allen H. Quist

This paper introduces a need for a cosmopolitan servant leader to successfully engage and deal with today's changing cross-cultural emerging world. Among others, the works of Winston and Patterson, Spears, and Marquardt and Berger, provide a platform to synthesize the characteristics of a servant leader and a cosmopolitan leader. From the synthesis, the research provides four core competencies for the cosmopolitan servant leader relative to the follower: valuing, preparing, focusing, and activating followers. The cosmopolitan leader is like a gardener who has the big picture of the completed garden and knows each and every plant. Anything the gardener does not know becomes a point of intentional and applicable discovery and understanding. The cosmopolitan servant leader is fully a leader who does leadership activities, fully a servant who is concerned for the welfare of the follower, and fully a cosmopolitan who comfortably lives out values and responsibilities in a cross-cultural and complex world.
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The Execution Void: Filling the Role of the Chief Strategy Officer
Lieutenant Commander Kenneth W. Rice, USN

In the dynamic business environment of today, organizations have to cope with a large number of challenges, including changes to the business landscape such as complex organizational structures, rapid globalization, new regulations, and the struggle to stay ahead of competitors. Many chief executive officers have less time to devote to executing strategy to address these challenges. As a result, they are appointing strategy officers, which is becoming popular among many large multi-national Fortune 500 companies. Strategy officers are responsible for three critical jobs that are considered to be the most important aspects of successful strategy execution: (a) they must portray a company's strategy to every business unit within the organization so that all employees, partners, contractors, customers, and investors understand the organization's strategic plan and how it plugs into the organization's overall goals; (b) they must drive immediate results in support of the long-term strategy, whereas the chief executive officer is normally responsible for driving long-term results and providing vision; and (c) they must drive decision making that creates immediate change within the organization. This paper identifies the need for filling this key position as well as the primary role of the strategy officer.
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