Strategic Leadership Development: A 90-Day Plan

Strategic leadership development works best as a mix of stretching experience, learning from other people and formal study. Start by assessing yourself against the six skills (anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align, learn), then follow a structured 90-day plan of weekly exercises, mentoring and a course such as CMI Level 7 or ACCA SBL.

How is strategic leadership developed?

Strategic leadership is developed mainly through experience, then sharpened through other people and formal learning. The best-known summary of this comes from the Center for Creative Leadership's research on how successful executives learned. In The Lessons of Experience (1988), McCall, Lombardo and Morrison asked 191 successful executives what had shaped them. Lombardo and Eichinger later boiled the findings down to a rough split: about 70% from tough assignments, 20% from other people (mostly bosses) and 10% from courses and reading (ATD).

The exact percentages are not scientifically robust, and ATD's review rightly warns against treating them as a budget rule. But the message is sound: you cannot become a strategic leader just by attending a course. You need stretching work, people who challenge you, and structured learning that gives you the frameworks to make sense of it all. This page gives you a practical plan for all three.

What should you develop first?

Start with a clear target. The most practical model of what to develop is the six skills from Schoemaker, Krupp and Howland's HBR research on more than 20,000 executives: anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align and learn. Take the self-test on my strategic leadership skills page, and choose your two lowest-scoring skills as the focus for the plan below.

A 90-day strategic leadership development plan

This plan assumes about two to three hours a week on top of your normal job. It is designed for managers moving into more strategic roles, but works at any level.

Weeks	Focus	Actions	Output
1 to 2	Baseline	Take the six-skills self-test; ask two colleagues to rate you too; agree goals with your manager or mentor	Development goals for 2 skills
3 to 4	Learn the language	Study the core models: PESTEL, five forces, SWOT, Ansoff	One-page analysis of your own organisation
5 to 6	Anticipate	Start a weekly scanning habit; interview three customers or front-line staff about what is changing	List of five trends and their implications
7 to 8	Challenge and interpret	Run a pre-mortem on a current plan; write three explanations for a recent surprise result	Revised plan or risk list
9 to 10	Decide	Write a decision record for a real decision; apply suitability, acceptability, feasibility	Documented recommendation
11 to 12	Align	Map stakeholders with Mendelow's matrix; hold one-to-ones before presenting your recommendation	Stakeholder plan; presentation
13	Learn	Retake the self-test; hold an after-action review with your mentor; set next 90-day goals	Updated development plan

What exercises build strategic leadership?

These exercises are the "70%" in practice: ways to turn your current job into a development opportunity.

The weekly scan

Spend 45 minutes a week reading outside your industry: a trade journal from a different sector, a technology newsletter, a regulator's consultation. Write one sentence on what each item might mean for your organisation. After three months you will have a habit that most managers never build.

The pre-mortem

Before a plan is launched, ask the team to imagine it has failed badly two years from now and to write down why. This surfaces risks people are reluctant to raise and trains the challenge skill.

The decision record

For each significant decision, write half a page: the options considered, the criteria, the choice and what would make you change your mind. Review it three months later. This is the single best exercise I know for improving judgement, because it stops hindsight from rewriting what you actually thought.

The strategy one-pager

Write your team's or organisation's strategy on one side of A4: where we are, where we are going, the three priorities, and what we will stop doing. If you cannot do it, the strategy is not yet clear enough to lead.

The stakeholder tour

Spend a month having short conversations with people in other functions, key customers and suppliers. Ask what they think your area should do differently. It builds both the anticipate and align skills, and it widens your network for future change.

The case study habit

Once a month, read a real case of strategic leadership and ask "what would I have done?" My strategic leadership examples page has twelve to start with.

You do not need to do all six exercises at once. Pick the two that match your weakest skills and do them consistently for a month before adding another. Consistency matters far more than intensity: a 45-minute scan every week for a year will change how you think, while a single strategy away day will not. Keep a simple log of what you did and what you noticed, because reviewing that log at the end of the 90 days is itself one of the most useful learning exercises in the plan.

How can other people help you develop?

This is the "20%". The most useful relationships are:

A mentor two levels up. Ask them to talk you through a recent strategic decision: what they considered, what they ignored, what they would do differently.
A sponsor. Someone who will put your name forward for stretch assignments such as strategy projects, business cases or board papers.
A peer challenger. A colleague from another function who will honestly question your thinking.
Exposure to the board. If possible, attend board or executive meetings as an observer, or write a paper for one. Seeing how senior people debate trade-offs is invaluable.

Which courses and qualifications develop strategic leadership?

This is the "10%", and it matters more than the percentage suggests, because it gives you the frameworks and vocabulary to make sense of experience. The main routes in the UK compared:

Route	Best for	Strengths	Watch out for
CMI Level 7 Strategic Management and Leadership Practice	Senior and aspiring senior managers	Available as award, certificate, diploma or extended diploma (from 70 to 640 hours of total qualification time); practical and work-based	Quality varies by provider; check tutor support
ACCA Strategic Business Leader (SBL)	Accountants and finance professionals	Covers leadership, governance, strategy, risk, technology, control and finance in one integrated case-study exam; tests professional skills	Part of the full ACCA qualification; a demanding exam (see my SBL guide)
MBA or Executive MBA	Mid-career leaders aiming for general management	Broad business grounding; strong network; strategy core modules	Significant cost and time commitment
Short executive education courses	Leaders needing a focused boost	Intensive; often case-based; quick to complete	Limited depth; benefit fades without practice
Structured self-study	Anyone, especially on a budget	Flexible and low cost; pairs well with the 90-day plan	Needs discipline; no external feedback unless you find a mentor

I hold both an Executive MBA and the FCCA qualification, and in my experience the most valuable thing about formal study is not the certificate. It is the discipline of applying frameworks to real cases under time pressure, which is exactly what the ACCA SBL exam demands. If you are a finance professional, SBL is one of the most practical strategic leadership development routes available, because it forces you to combine strategy, governance, risk and leadership in a single scenario. For a UK-focused overview of how strategy and leadership are taught together, see strategic management and leadership.

Which books help with strategic leadership development?

Reading is the cheapest way to build the frameworks. I have curated two lists: the best strategic leadership books and the best leadership development books. Start with one book on strategy and one on leadership, and apply each idea to your own organisation as you read.

My own book, Becoming A Strategic Business Leader, is a concise guide to the core strategy, governance and leadership models, originally written for the ACCA SBL exam and useful for any manager. It works well as the study companion to weeks 3 and 4 of the 90-day plan, because its 19 chapters cover the models you need in a compact form: strategic planning and analysis (chapters 1 and 2), strategic choice (chapter 4), stakeholders (chapter 7), leadership (chapter 8), risk (chapter 12), ethics (chapter 13) and managing change (chapter 19). The first three chapters are free.

How do organisations develop strategic leaders?

If you are responsible for developing others, the same 70/20/10 logic applies at organisational level:

Design stretch roles deliberately. Rotate high-potential managers through strategy, finance and operational roles, and give them responsibility for cross-functional projects.
Involve them in real strategy work. Invite future leaders into strategy days and scenario planning, not just to hear the outcome.
Build mentoring and coaching into the system. Pair high-potential managers with executives, and train senior leaders to coach. Goleman found coaching to be one of the leadership styles with a positive effect on climate.
Support formal learning with application. Sponsor qualifications such as CMI Level 7 or ACCA, but require participants to apply each module to a live business issue.
Plan succession openly. Samimi and colleagues' review of strategic leadership lists human resource management, including choosing the senior team, as one of the eight functions of strategic leaders. Developing successors is part of the job, not an HR side project.

What should you focus on at each career stage?

Development priorities change as you move up. Trying to build everything at once is a recipe for building nothing.

Stage	Development priority	Best experiences	Useful formal learning
Team leader	Communicating direction; learning from results	Leading a small change; running team reviews	Introductory management courses; core strategy models
Middle manager	Systems thinking; aligning across functions	Cross-functional projects; business cases	CMI Level 7 award or certificate; ACCA SBL for finance staff
Senior manager	Anticipating; making portfolio choices	Strategy reviews; leading a turnaround or launch	Executive MBA; CMI Level 7 diploma
Director	Challenging the status quo; governance; ethics	Board exposure; non-executive roles elsewhere	Board and governance programmes

A non-executive or trustee role on the board of a charity, school or small business is one of the most underrated development experiences. It gives you a view of strategy and governance from the other side of the table, usually years before you would get it in your main job.

What gets in the way of strategic leadership development?

In my experience, the barriers are rarely about ability. They are about time, habit and environment.

The urgent beats the important. Operational problems are loud; strategic thinking is quiet. Unless you protect time in your diary, development activities are the first thing to go. Treat your weekly scan like a meeting you cannot move.
Being rewarded for the wrong things. If your performance is judged only on short-term operational targets, strategic work will feel like a distraction. Talk to your manager about including one strategic objective in your goals.
Learning without applying. Courses that are not linked to real work fade within weeks. Always pair formal learning with a live problem.
No honest feedback. The more senior you become, the less people tell you the truth. Build a peer challenger relationship early, before you need it.
Fear of being wrong. Strategic decisions are made under uncertainty, so some will turn out badly. People who avoid all risk never develop judgement. Use decision records to separate bad luck from bad thinking.

How do you know your development is working?

Look for changes in behaviour, not just learning. Signs of progress include: you are invited into more strategic conversations; colleagues ask for your view on long-term issues; your recommendations show options and trade-offs, not just one answer; you spot issues before they become urgent; and your self-test scores rise when you retake it. If none of these is happening after six months, change the mix: usually that means more stretch experience rather than more courses.

Bottom line

Strategic leadership development works best as a mix: mostly stretching experience, supported by mentors and challengers, and grounded in the core frameworks from formal study or reading. Use the six skills to choose your focus, follow the 90-day plan, practise one exercise every week, and pick a formal route (CMI Level 7, ACCA SBL, an MBA or structured self-study) that fits your career. Then review, reset and repeat.

FAQs

How do you develop strategic leadership skills?

Assess yourself against the six skills (anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align and learn), pick your weakest two and practise targeted exercises every week, such as a weekly scan, a pre-mortem or a decision record. Add a mentor who will challenge your thinking, look for stretch assignments and support it with formal learning or reading.

What is the 70-20-10 model in leadership development?

It is a rule of thumb from Center for Creative Leadership research suggesting leaders learn roughly 70% from challenging experiences, 20% from other people and 10% from courses and reading. The exact numbers are not scientifically proven, but the principle that development comes mostly from doing and reflecting is widely accepted.

Which qualification is best for strategic leadership in the UK?

It depends on your career. CMI Level 7 Strategic Management and Leadership Practice suits senior managers in any sector. ACCA's Strategic Business Leader exam suits finance professionals and covers leadership, governance and strategy together. An MBA or Executive MBA gives broad general management grounding but needs more time and money.

How long does it take to develop strategic leadership?

You can see real improvement in specific skills within 90 days of deliberate practice. Becoming a fully rounded strategic leader usually takes years, because it depends on exposure to different roles, decisions and setbacks. The key is to keep cycling through assess, practise and review rather than waiting for experience alone.

Can you develop strategic leadership without a senior role?

Yes. You can practise scanning for trends, challenging assumptions, writing decision records and building stakeholder relationships in almost any role. Volunteering for cross-functional projects, business cases or strategy reviews gives exposure to senior thinking, and studying the core strategy models prepares you for bigger responsibilities.

What books help with strategic leadership development?

Combine one book on strategy with one on leadership, and apply each idea to your own organisation as you read. A concise model-based guide, such as Becoming A Strategic Business Leader, helps you learn the core frameworks quickly, while leaders' own accounts and classic leadership books build judgement and perspective.