Strategic thinking skills are one of the most sought-after skills in the business world.
According to Harvard Business Review, “[Because] organizations face unprecedented challenges, fostering the creativity necessary to develop truly breakthrough ideas has become more important than ever.”
Anyone can follow a pre-established recipe. It takes expert strategic thinkers, though, to know when that recipe is no longer working. In this post, we are going to cover how great strategic thinkers give companies a competitive advantage in the marketplace. If you develop this critical skill, you will create new opportunities for yourself and be elevated to higher-level positions in your organization.
What Is Strategic Thinking and How Does It Help You Become a Better Leader?
In order to understand the importance of this skill, let’s start at the beginning. What exactly is strategic thinking? And why are strategic thinking skills so important to business success?
Definition of Strategic Thinking.
Strategic Thinking (Critical Thinking) is a process of identifying ways to move a person, team, or organization toward a long-term goal. When you think strategically, you have to anticipate setbacks and challenges and have a plan to deal with them. You also have to measure your progress toward the goal.
A good way to explain this is to think about playing Chess. A good strategy will anticipate how your opponent will move and plan your own moves well in advance. So, strategic thinking is planning combined with adapting to changes in order to reach the ultimate goal.
Personally, I believe that the absolute most-effective strategic thinkers are those who are also adjusting the long-term goal consistently as well. At times, you may find that your goal isn’t big enough. In those cases, you want to increase the goal. In others, the marketplace may change, or we may uncover competitive intelligence where we change the goal altogether.
Going back to the Chess example, in some cases, a good leader may realize, “Whoa, we aren’t playing Chess at all. This is a brand new game.”
How Does Thinking this Way Help You Be a Better Leader?
My team went through this with the Covid-19 pandemic. At the very start of the spread, our strategy was to reschedule meetings postponed due to meeting restrictions. Next, we had to adapt when the restrictions increased and the weeks of delay turned into months.
Eventually, we realized that our customers were being forced to transform their in-person meetings into virtual ones. Many of these customers had little or no experience organizing big virtual meetings. Since we had that expertise, we were able to adapt quickly to the new needs of the market. Good leaders are able to do this.
Poor leaders tend to be more reactionary. When challenges develop, the poor leader is always playing catch-up. This type of leadership is like playing baseball and just watching the ball go by you. The more times that you do this, the more strikes are against you. Eventually, you have to swing out of desperation. A better strategy is to study the pitcher. If he throws his fastball high in the strike zone 80% of the time on the first pitch, I can anticipate that. When I see that action, I can capitalize on it. If he doesn’t, I make an adjustment on the second pitch.
Show Notes: Make Strategic Thinking Part of Your Team Culture (https://www.leadersinstitute.com/strategic-thinking-make-strategic-thinking-part-of-your-team-culture/)