Becoming the Ringmaster: Mastering the Three Ring Circus of the Strategic Environment

摘要

A strategic leader masters the strategic environment. To accomplish this, the leader must understand the environment, its different arenas, the relationships between arenas, and the resources these relationships provide. Current literature describes the strategic environment as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). This paper seeks to move past the VUCA definition, offering the strategic leader a holistic, interactive. and dynamic description of the strategic environment. This paper defines a strategic environment consisting of three arenas: the internal political arena, the external partisan political arena, and the international political arena. To clarify this structure, this paper offers an analogy defining the role of the strategic leader as a Circus ringmaster. Similar to a circus ringmaster, the strategic leader must understand the relationships between the three arenas and the resources produced by these relationships. The strategic leader can then aggressively interact and focus these resources in order to bring success to his or her organization. The ringmaster must accomplish this in full view of the media, who evaluate, criticize, and possibly, praise the leader's performance. The paper concludes with three methods for using the Theory. The first, an historical example, uses the ringmaster concept as a historical case study, applying it to President Truman's removal of General MacArthur from Korea. The second method illustrates the model's benefit as an analytic tool. The third method describes the model as a structure for educating officers to be strategic leaders. The paper concludes with a call for study to continue the debate for clarification of the strategic environment.