STRATEGIC THINKING

What is Strategic Thinking?

Strategic thinking is simply an intentional and rational thought process that focuses on the analysis of critical factors and variables that will influence the long-term success of a business, a team, or an individual.

Strategic thinking includes careful and deliberate anticipation of threats and vulnerabilities to guard against and opportunities to pursue. Ultimately, strategic thinking leads to a clear set of goals, plans, and new ideas required to survive and thrive in a competitive, changing environment. This sort of thinking must account for economic realities, market forces, and available resources.

Strategic thinking requires research, analytical thinking, innovation, problem-solving skills, communication and leadership skills, and decisiveness.

Why is Strategic Thinking Important?

The competitive landscape can change quickly for any organization. New trends may emerge quickly and require you to take advantage of them or fall behind. By incorporating everyday strategic thinking into your work and life routines, you will become more skilled at anticipating, forecasting, and capitalizing on opportunities.

On an individual level, thinking strategically allows you to make a greater contribution in your role, become more essential to your organization, and prove that you are ready to control greater resources.

What is Strategic Thinking in Business?

During an organization’s annual strategic planning process, leaders often compile, analyze, and synthesize external and internal data and ideas to develop its strategic intent and build a strategic narrative. This document will guide the company into the future for a defined period of time. Leaders then choose and plan specific actions that will accomplish these strategic initiatives.

Businesses also need to schedule a time for strategic thinking and reviews throughout the year. Leadership teams should periodically examine their strategic initiatives to ensure execution is taking place, review, and sustain the effort across the organization.

What is Strategic Thinking in Leadership?

Business leaders and stakeholders use strategic thinking to decide what product mix they will offer, what competitive landscape to compete in (or not compete in), and how limited resources will be allocated such as time, employees, and capital. They must decide how to best structure, enrol others to achieve important objectives and to avoid putting resources at unnecessary risk of loss.

What are the Components of Strategic Thinking?

If you are working on your company’s strategy, you will need to engage in analysis, problem-solving, decision making, and leading through change.

As you create a strategic direction or plan, you will analyze:

·         Business opportunities and vulnerabilities

·         Feasible of each idea or risk

·         The costs associated with each move you are considering

·         The likelihood that various tactics will be effective

·         Methods of aligning objectives with the overall plan

·         The effects of competitors, suppliers, customers, and new substitutes might have on your strategic plans

As you discover obstacles during the planning process, you will problem-solve by:

·         Gathering relevant information about the problem

·         Clearly defining the problem from a strategic point of view

·         Brainstorming possible solutions

·         Imagining further challenges and how to overcome them

·         Delegating assignments of various parts of this strategy to key associates

Strategic thinking requires agility and decisiveness in choosing a plan and sticking with it. However, you have to be aware of new, more promising opportunities. It is a balancing act between consistency and flexibility. You and your team will:

·         Make sure decisions are well-informed by thorough research

·         Choose objectives and accompanying metrics

·         Prioritize objectives

·         Follow a standard decision-making process

·         Build consensus, when necessary

During strategic planning, you will need to communicate ideas to your staff and gather feedback from them. You will then utilize effective channels to communicate a compelling vision of the completed plan to all employees and keep them focused on their contribution to the plan.

How to Improve Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Blinders off: learn to see what nobody else sees

As a general rule, the frenetic pace of daily life prevents us from taking a broad view. If you are putting on mental blinders and only looking straight ahead, you are missing a lot of information along the way. From time to time you have to turn your head to look around. It is a matter of opening your eyes fully to see more and detect the opportunities missed by others.

Stretch your wings: fly beyond the merely tactical

When you walk, your eyes are fixed on the ground so you do not trip on objects in your path. This is tactical. The strategy is not about walking, but rather flying, so as to see the bigger picture. When you start working in a company you have to begin by walking, but as you grow within the company you have to learn to fly and develop the ability to see beyond the mere tactical scenario.

Become passionate: enjoy what you do

We spend a lot of time at work, so it is important to enjoy it, to feel proud, to make it worth the effort. You have to want to do what you do: meet with and work with your team, make decisions, imagine the future. If you only do it because someone makes you do it, it will not work.

Take the reins: manage your time and delegate

Time is our most limited resource. Around half of the directors in the world say that they have to spend time checking up on details that are actually the responsibility of people who report to them. Think about your daily life: how many of the things you do could be done by a member of your team? It is very important to delegate so as to be able to dedicate time to the task of leading.

Trust your team: let it grow

A very important part of strategic planning consists of thinking about how to make the company grow, and the company only grows if its people grow. The power of a manager lies in his or her ability to make other people powerful. It is an executive’s responsibility to make the members of his or her team grow, giving them the power to take decisions. Allow your collaborators to share fully in your successes.

Do not be afraid: take decisions

Read, listen, and learn - but take your own decisions. When you make a decision, stick with it. Do not continually question everything.

Be consumer-centric: centre yourself on the client

Put yourself in the shoes of your clients, live their experiences. If you are a food company, your work does not end at the shop shelves, it must reach all the way into consumers’ kitchens. This was how Bimbo discovered that kids left the bread crusts on their plates and decided to launch the sandwich loaf without crusts.

When it comes to designing strategies, think about people, not the territories. 

Be flexible: adapt to change

Things move so fast that a strategic plan, once it has been drafted and printed, already needs revision. Agility is an essential ability for executives. You have to be obstinate in your vision but very flexible with the details of implementation.

Make things happen

In matters of strategy, thinking is important but it is not everything: if you do not do anything with it, it is as if it does not exist.

Look ahead: anticipate the future

How much will we sell in the next two months? As a director, it is your job to know. One of the reasons why companies fail is because they lose sight of the future. The companies that succeed are those that write the future.

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