CED Leadership & Strategic Management 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A nonprofit executive director discovers that two senior managers have fundamentally incompatible leadership styles that are disrupting team cohesion. What is the most effective first step?
- Immediately reassign one manager to a different department
- Facilitate a structured conflict resolution session to identify shared organizational values (Correct answer)
- Allow the conflict to resolve naturally over time
- Terminate the lower-performing manager
Correct answer: Facilitate a structured conflict resolution session to identify shared organizational values
Structured conflict resolution anchored in shared organizational values addresses root causes while preserving institutional knowledge.
Question 2: Which strategic planning model explicitly links an organization's vision, mission, and values to measurable performance outcomes across multiple perspectives?
- SWOT Analysis
- Balanced Scorecard (Correct answer)
- Porter's Five Forces
- McKinsey 7-S Framework
Correct answer: Balanced Scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard translates vision and strategy into performance metrics across financial, customer, internal process, and learning perspectives.
Question 3: An executive director wants to foster a culture of innovation but faces resistance from long-tenured staff. Which leadership approach is MOST appropriate?
- Directive leadership that mandates new practices
- Transactional leadership with rewards for compliance
- Transformational leadership that inspires intrinsic motivation (Correct answer)
- Laissez-faire leadership to give staff full autonomy
Correct answer: Transformational leadership that inspires intrinsic motivation
Transformational leadership addresses resistance by connecting innovation to a compelling shared vision and intrinsically motivating staff.
Question 4: In scenario planning for strategic management, what is the PRIMARY purpose of developing multiple scenarios?
- To predict which single future outcome is most likely
- To prepare the organization to respond effectively under a range of possible futures (Correct answer)
- To reduce the strategic planning budget by limiting research
- To assign blame when a chosen strategy fails
Correct answer: To prepare the organization to respond effectively under a range of possible futures
Scenario planning builds organizational resilience by stress-testing strategy against multiple plausible futures rather than committing to one forecast.
Question 5: A CEO is choosing between centralized and decentralized decision-making structures. Which condition MOST strongly favors decentralization?
- The organization operates in a single, stable market
- Frontline staff possess specialized local knowledge critical to operations (Correct answer)
- Regulatory compliance requires uniform procedures
- The board demands consistent reporting across all units
Correct answer: Frontline staff possess specialized local knowledge critical to operations
Decentralization is most effective when local expertise is essential, as it empowers those closest to the issue to make informed decisions.
Question 6: Which of the following BEST describes 'strategic drift' in an organization?
- A deliberate pivot in strategy following market disruption
- A gradual, incremental divergence of strategy from environmental change until crisis occurs (Correct answer)
- The intentional phasing out of an outdated product line
- Expanding operations into new geographic markets
Correct answer: A gradual, incremental divergence of strategy from environmental change until crisis occurs
Strategic drift occurs when organizations incrementally adjust without matching the pace of external change, eventually reaching a performance cliff.
Question 7: An executive director must present a major strategic shift to a skeptical board. Which persuasion approach is MOST effective?
- Lead with emotional appeals to the organization's history
- Present data-driven evidence alongside a clear narrative linking strategy to mission (Correct answer)
- Defer to the board's judgment and present no recommendation
- Emphasize the risks of competitor organizations' strategies
Correct answer: Present data-driven evidence alongside a clear narrative linking strategy to mission
Combining credible data with a mission-aligned narrative addresses both rational and values-based concerns of board members.
CED Leadership & Strategic Management 2
A nonprofit executive director discovers that two senior managers have fundamentally incompatible leadership styles that are disrupting team cohesion.
What is the most effective first step?