Assessing the Impact of Leadership on Strategy Implementation in a Telecommunications Company: The Case of Botswana Telecommunications Corporation

The paper investigated the impact of leadership’s influence on the strategy implementation at a stock-exchange listed communications service provider company in Botswana, Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC). Following granting of ethical approvals, an online questionnaire was distributed to 58 BTC employees in offices across the country. Following pilot testing of the self-developed data-gathering instrument, data analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS for descriptive and inferential statistics analysis on the data collected. Based on a sample of 50 BTC employees generating an 86% response rate, it was found that BTC leaders are aware of the organizational strategy and that they constantly emphasize the strategy to their followers by insisting on strategy-centric initiatives and reviewing progress towards attaining organizational objectives. Secondly, it can be concluded that BTC leaders encourage their followers to be strategy sensitive by constantly reminding them of the strategic objectives and providing resources and training where required for followers to achieve the strategic initiatives. The research assists in illuminating the influence and impact of leadership on implementation of strategy in former publicly owned telecommunications companies in Africa that have been listed and could still be weaning themselves from central government influence on strategy.