Are you a good strategic thinker? 5 Signs You Could Be.
Strategic thinking capabilities are a huge asset to an organization. Finding good internal strategic thinkers and leveraging them in our planning...
2 min read
Cecilia Lynch
May 1, 2019 9:30:00 AM
For years, “strategic thinking” has been reserved for executive team meetings or board rooms as part of a firm’s strategic planning process. However, the highly dynamic environments we operate in today mean that the assumptions and agreements that form the basis of strategic plans can shift dramatically between these highly structured planning processes.
Strategic thinking capabilities should be relied upon frequently and informally to maintain and possibly accelerate performance against long-range goals, just as the captain of a large sailing vessel depends on the crew to assess and act given the changing forces and challenges that arise on their journey. So, too, any leadership team should be able to depend on their managers to explore, evaluate, and decide how to make changes while still keeping the firm on course to achieve its long-range goals.
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Strategic thinking is the practice of orienting decisions with the end in mind and working backward to ensure action aligns with the ultimate goal. It is a discipline of evaluating alternatives and adapting decision-making to the ultimate goal rather than relying on a more limited and incremental problem-solving approach.
Strategic thinking is used to develop a strategic plan, and those who build the strategic plan should be prepared to guide implementation and make tactical decisions to stay on course. However, only a tiny fraction of managers within an organization participate in the strategic planning discussion. The need for strategic thinking capabilities increases when managers driving operations have limited engagement with the leaders who authored the strategic plan or if the strategic plan has not been updated recently and seems less relevant to the current challenges these managers are facing.
A Strategic Direction: the Prerequisite for Strategic Thinking
Leadership must first have established the core thinking that is the foundation of their future direction before attempting to build strategic thinking capabilities. When organizations are small, this knowledge is created organically by working on the business alongside managers and team members; as organizations grow and create management hierarchies, this informal sharing of perspective does not happen. At this time, a more formal strategic planning effort is required to produce a clear story of progress toward a shared future destination.
When strategic thinkers lack the context they need, they manufacture it, leading to factions or divergent plans that can destabilize an organization or drain its productivity.
See if you have the strategic direction needed to build strategic thinking capabilities:
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