Strategic Thinking Skills

Strategic thinking is often looked upon as something that only certain people can do. Somehow, the idea of ‘strategy’ and ‘strategic thinking’ has developed a mystic aura. The other side of the coin is that everyone who has leadership aspirations includes ‘strategic thinking skills’ on their CV and LinkedIn profile.

But what does 'strategic thinking' really mean, and how can you develop strategic thinking skills?

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What is Strategy?

In a military sense, ‘strategy’ is defined by Chambers Dictionary as ‘generalship, or the art of conducting a campaign and manoeuvring an army’.

Tactics is defined as ‘the art of manoeuvring in the presence of the enemy’.

In a business sense, strategy has therefore come to mean the long-term vision for the future, and how you plan to get there, with tactics being what you do on a day-to-day basis that supports your strategy, and particularly how you deal with problems.

Strategy, in its simplest sense, is deciding where you want to be and how you’re going to get there, and then taking the action necessary to do so. So what do you need to do to develop a strategy?

• It sounds obvious but, as a first step, you need to know where you are now. Everything that you do starts from your current position. Even the Grand Old Duke of York, whose skill in manoeuvring has gone down in history, or at least nursery rhyme, couldn’t move downhill until he had first moved up. So gather as much information as you can about where you really are, and don’t accept anecdote as truth. Demand evidence.
• Next, identify the ideal future position at a particular point in time. This could be in five years, ten years or one year’s time, depending on the situation. There are lots of tools out there for doing this in workshops, including visualisation, drawing pictures, ‘blue sky’ thinking and so on, but you can also just spend time thinking about it. It’s important to aim high at this stage, but also to be as detailed as possible. The more detail you can include, the more you know what you want, which is true as much at home as at work. Don’t forget to include things that you really don’t want, as well as what you do want! Do write or draw, as it’s much more concrete on paper.
• Now, from your ideal future position, think about what is really important to you or the company. Where do you or it really need to be? This is about prioritisation. Pare your essential position down to the bones, so that you are really clear what is crucial. Highlight the top three issues or elements, then the top five. Identify any details which really don’t matter. This is why you needed lots of detail at the last step: you can now pick out which details are really important.
• Now it’s time to work out the intermediate milestones from ‘now’ to ‘then’. Now you know where you need to be in five years’ time, where would you need to be in one, two, or three years in order to get there? Concentrate on ‘milestones’ rather than ‘actions’, that is, things you will have achieved, rather than what you’re going to do in practical terms.
• Finally, it’s time to work out actions: what you need to do to get from ‘now’ to your first intermediate milestone, then from there to the next and so on.

Congratulations, you have just completed a strategic plan!

Resource: skillsyouneed.com