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The 5 Steps to Strategic Thinking That Really Matter
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5 Steps To Strategic Thinking
- Align to your vision. When you're clear about what you want, you're able to describe it in vivid detail and hypothesize how to get it.
- Ask questions. Ask yourself what are your vision, goals and resources.
- Give it some thought. Find a quiet place and reflect. Write in detail your answers from the previous step. Set up a meeting with people from different backgrounds and discuss matters of strategy.
- Plan. Identify your action items to achieve your short-term and long-term goals.
- Diagram. Diagramming, mindmapping, brainstorming, drawing pictures, mocking up graphs and charts… All of these techniques stimulate your creativity and can break you out of the box.
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7 Characteristics Of Strategic Thinkers
- Vision: they use a mix of logic and creativity to define ambitious but rigorous visions of what needs to be achieved.
- Framework: taking into account their own biases, timeline and resources, they can define their objectives and develop multiple action plans.
- Perceptiveness: they observe and understand the world from all the different perspectives.
- Assertiveness: They’re good at evaluating, deciding and promptly executing their decisions without letting doubts fog their vision.
- Flexibility: they seek advice to compensate for their weaknesses and then twist their ideas and framework to achieve their goals. But they are flexible without breaking the rules.
- Emotional Balance: they are aware and balance their emotions so as to favor the achievement of their goals.
- Patience: they understand that most achievements are a long-term endeavor involving various milestones and a lot of effort.
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“Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If..."
David Collis - Harvard Business School professor
Invite Dissent To Build Others’ Commitment
An executive needs those she leads to translate strategic insights into choices that drive results. For people to commit to carrying out an executive’s strategic thinking, they have to both understand and believe in it. But repeated explanations don’t necessarily increase people’s understanding and ownership of strategy. Making them discuss the pros and cons of it make it so the problem is better understood and flaws are identified and fixed increasing ownership for success.
Identify The Strategic Requirements Of The Job
When someone is promoted into a function that requires strategic leadership it’s easy to spend time fixing what was wrong in their previous function but that often isn’t what the strategic leadership position requires. So, identify the strategic requirements of your job and focus on them.
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Being More Reflective
Strategic thinkers understand and dig deeper when analyzing processes, developing and applying performance metrics, collecting data and producing analytics for better decision-making. They c...
Being better leaders
Strategic thinkers advance their careers by being better leaders. Not all great thinkers are great leaders, but the ones who are leadership material are likely better leaders than those who fail to think strategically.
Strategic leaders go beyond the role of having and communicating a vision to fully understanding, planning and executing the necessary strategies to realize it. They make better decisions as they have a more holistic view that includes the organization and the people inside and outside it.
Creating a Domino effect
Strategic thinkers demonstrate organizational value by creating more strategic thinkers. Developing a culture that considers strategy and doesn’t lose sight of the value that needs to be delivered greatly increases the capabilities of a company. Strategic thinkers are the ones in the organization who ponder and prompt questions that are designed to create even more strategic thinkers.