Have you ever been told that you need to be more strategic without giving any concrete guidance on how to do that? If this is a top visible skill that helps you climb the organizational chart, it is worth the effort to grow the ability, regardless of your current position.
Being a strategic thinker can involve the big-picture, where you are not making decisions in a vacuum. You consider the future direction, how other departments might be affected, and how the outside world could respond to your choices.
Here are some specific approaches you can take to be a more strategic or a big picture thinker:
1. Take a stakeholder-centered approach. Step outside of your silo and stand in the shoes of all those connected to and impacted by your company. Consider these perspectives:
· Go vertical (up and down). Step back and survey the landscape to see the system. You can think about the customer, direct reports, manager, skip manager, CEO, shareholders, and community – both locally and globally. Ask the question – what do these people want and need? Where are the common denominators?
· Go horizontal (left and right). How are you considering other departments in your strategy? How is it aligned with the company’s domestic and international vision? Look across to your direct competitors or beyond to other industries to collect some of the best ideas and trends to make sense of the data in terms of what it means for your team and your company.
· Use an impact lens. What will be the result of your strategy on your organization and these various stakeholders? Do the outcomes support the broader goals of the organization? What could negatively impact the results? What do business partners need to understand to ensure its success? Having some answers to these questions can help you be more thoughtful and strategic.
2. Think in Timelines. Strategic thinkers operate across multiple time horizons simultaneously. What does the right outcome look like in six months? In three years? Where do those timeframes create tension, and how do you navigate it? What are the early signals that will tell you whether you're on track — or off it? What skills and talent will it take to succeed in the long term? What are the final indicators that tell you the strategy was successful? Whom do you need to support you on the journey?
The discipline of building a basic road map — with milestones, decision points, and indicators of progress — transforms abstract strategic intent into a navigable path. Without that map, strategy is just aspiration.
3. Anticipate challenges and ask hard questions. Strategic leaders don't just solve the problems in front of them — they think ahead to the problems that haven't arrived yet. What are the three most significant challenges facing the organization today? What challenges are coming in the next eighteen months that most people haven't named yet? How does today's work create or foreclose tomorrow's options?
The commander's question is useful here: What battle must we win to win the war? Identifying the lead domino — the challenge that, if solved, would unlock everything else — is one of the highest-leverage things a strategic thinker can do.
4. Solve the Right Problem. Most people want to offer a solution to the problem before adequately defining it. Quick fixes may seem convenient, but they often solve only the surface issues and waste resources that could otherwise be used to tackle the real cause. The 5 WHYs technique is great for getting at the root cause and preventing stubborn or recurrent problems as they are symptoms of deeper causes. It was developed and fine-tuned within the Toyota Motor Corporation as a critical component of its problem-solving training. Sakichi Toyoda, the Japanese Thomas Edison and architect of the Toyota Production System in the 1950s, describes the method in his book as “the basis of Toyota’s scientific approach . . . by repeating the word why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.” Today, the method is used far beyond Toyota and is popular in lean development.
The 5 Whys in practice — a sales example:
Why did we miss our Q3 revenue target? [Because we closed fewer deals than projected.]
Why did we close fewer deals? [Because our pipeline was too thin entering the quarter.]
Why was the pipeline thin? [Because the sales team spent most of Q2 focused on renewing existing accounts.]
Why were they focused on renewals instead of new business? [Because there were no clear targets or incentives for new customer acquisition.]
Why were there no targets for new acquisition? [Because leadership assumed the existing customer base would generate enough growth — and that assumption was never tested.]
The root cause isn't a missed sales number. It's a strategic assumption that went unexamined. That's where the real fix lives — and it's a very different conversation than "close more deals."
5. Question Your Assumptions. If you are discussing a long-term company strategy upon which years of effort and expense will be based, you can ask basic questions about your beliefs. How do you know that business will increase? What does the research say about your expectations about the future of the market? Have you taken the time to step into the figurative shoes of your customers as a “secret shopper?” Another way to question your assumptions is to consider alternatives. You might ask: what if our clients changed? What if our suppliers went out of business? These sorts of questions help you gain new and vital perspectives that help hone your thinking.
6. Use First principles thinking. It is the best way to reverse-engineer complicated problems and reveal creative possibilities. The idea is to break down complex problems into fundamental elements and then reassemble them from the ground up. It’s one of the best ways to learn to think for yourself, unlock your creative potential, and move from linear to non-linear results. This approach was used by the philosopher Aristotle who defined it as the first basis from which a thing is known, and now by Elon Musk and Charlie Munger. It is about thinking like a scientist and not assuming anything; What is true and what has been proven?
Musk gave an example of how Space X uses first principles to innovate at low prices. People thought battery packs were expensive because that’s the way they have been in the past. Musk responded,
“Well, no, that’s pretty dumb… Because if you applied that reasoning to anything new, then you wouldn’t be able to ever get to that new thing…. you can’t say, … oh, nobody wants a car because horses are great, and we’re used to them and they can eat grass and there’s lots of grass all over the place and … there’s no gasoline that people can buy. Historically, battery packs cost $600 per kilowatt-hour… So the first principles would be, … what are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of the material constituents? … It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation, and a steel can. So break that down on a material basis; if we bought that on a London Metal Exchange, what would each of these things cost? Oh, jeez, it’s … $80 per kilowatt-hour. So, clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”
First principles thinking allows you to see problems from multiple angles and interpret complex and conflicting information with curiosity and open-mindedness, and that’s what strategic thinking is all about.
7. Understand Complex Systems. Agents can sometimes interact in ways where they fundamentally change each other and something entirely different and unpredictable emerges from the contact. Paul Cilliers used the following analogy: “a jumbo jet is complicated (it is equal to the sum of its parts), and if you had to take it apart or reverse actions, you could, mayonnaise is complex (once mixed, you can’t separate the parts again; the Interaction fundamentally changes them).” In other words, complex systems are subject to co-evolution, and once it happens, it’s irreversible. How can you factor this idea into your strategy or big-picture thinking? Which steps you choose to take will be easily reversible, and which ones are permanent? How will that impact your experiments? Knowing this information will help you thrive in a VUCA world.
8. Practice Polarity Thinking. In Adam Grant’s Think Again, he talks about polarity thinking. For example, how can two great thought leaders have two different perspectives? Daniel Goleman would argue that EQ matters more than IQ as it can determine 90% of a leader’s success. In contrast, Jordan Peterson would maintain that EQ is a corporate marketing scheme; he downplays its importance. How can these two PhD holders be right if they have opposite views? Polarity thinking can allow both of them to be right, especially when thinking about context. Instead of talking about why it is important, you want to talk about WHEN it is important. EQ is beneficial with jobs that deal with perceiving and understanding emotions (customer service, counseling) but less relevant and even detrimental where emotions are less essential (mechanics, accountants). How can you apply polarity thinking or both/and approach to your business as a creative exercise?
9. Apply the 4Cs Framework. Adam Brandenburger writes about contrast, combination, constraint, and context to get creative with your strategy:
· Contrast. Challenge the assumptions undergirding the status quo.
· Combination. Steve Jobs famously said that creativity is “just connecting things”; what products or services seem independent from or even in tension with one another can you link?
· Constraint. A good strategist looks at an organization’s limitations and considers how they might become strengths. A lack of resources can be a fertilizer for innovation. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was staying near Lake Geneva during an unusually cold and stormy summer and found herself trapped indoors with nothing to do but exercise her imagination. Artists are pretty familiar with limitations, from setbacks to structural ones like writing a 14-line poem. How can you take a no and turn it into a yes? A client I was coaching was trying to get a budget for a new hire and when she was told no, she remained undeterred. She came up with an internal rotation idea as a way of repurposing talent to help on other teams. This solution helped with another goal of reducing burnout and attrition because it gave other people an option of doing different work, exercising their passion, and staying engaged.
· Context. If you reflect on how a problem which is similar to yours was solved in an entirely different context, surprising insights may emerge.
10. Build Scenario Plans. How can you lay out 3 likely scenarios, a least likely one, and a crazy one so you are prepared for as much as you can? What redundancies can you put into place so that there is support in place if one path fails? How can you anticipate what other people want and are likely to do so you can craft your response? Art Kleiner, Editor-in-Chief of PwC Global promotes the habit of mentalizing - which is thinking about what other people are thinking and instead of sharing what they want or what you want, going a step beyond to articulate what they are likely to do next.
11. Toggle between the Balcony and the Dance Floor. Move between the big-picture and day-to-day execution to broaden your view. As you are completing the day-to-day work, can you easily connect the work to the mission and vision? Do you know the why behind the small decisions? Similarly, in those conceptual meetings, can you move from the 1,000-foot view to the 100 to understand the next steps and roadmap that will allow you to ascend? Can you take a broad idea and create a plan with metrics and benchmarks while keeping the WHY top of mind?
From Thinking to Communicating
Once you have engaged in strategic thinking, it is important to have time for reflection so you can consolidate the learnings, get clear on your point of view, and communicate your strategy so your boss knows you are a strategic thinker and you can increase your visible leadership.
Here are two helpful steps for perception management:
1. Develop a clear point of view. When you have considered and implemented the above approaches, bring a perspective to the table. Do people know where you stand? Your leaders want to know what you think, so when you show that you are considering the big-picture and can articulate your views, you can stand out for a promotion. Beyond just coming up with ideas, it’s even more powerful when you can take the initiative and show you have thought a few steps ahead of how you would implement something and put your ideas into action. Having good ideas and strategies are only the first step; you also must communicate them and bring people along.
2. Prepare deliberately before key meetings. It can be too easy for us to feel like we will wing the meeting, but it is more powerful when we are deliberate. Block out 30 minutes on your calendar before essential meetings so you have time to collect your thoughts, and arrange and package your ideas into a coherent vision and direction. That shows strategic thinking when you are capable of synthesizing information and articulating knowledge concisely and compellingly. You can take the same approach in emails, when you are talking about completing work, you can offer the WHY behind the work and connect it to the mission and vision.
Having strategic thinking skills is essential for all people in the organization to develop because you can better deal with uncertainty and complexity. A common mistake for leaders as they rise through the ranks is that they stay in operational or execution mode and are not doing enough of the strategy work to get to the next phase of their careers. Using any of these frameworks can not only help you advance but also strengthen your contributions to your team and organization.
Quote of the day: “Always start at the end before you begin.” Author Robert Kiyosaki
Q: How do you develop your strategic thinking skills? What are your best practices for being strategic? Comment and share with us; we would love to hear!
The next blog in this series (3 of 4) will focus on thinking and reflecting practices to strengthen your strategic thinking skills
As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to engage in strategic thinking for them and their teams, contact me to learn more.
How do you like to think strategically?
