Do you want to become a “Strategic Thinker”? What steps will you need to take?

The term “Strategic Thinking” — Sounds fancy, right? It’s what those important folks around the office talk about. Well, it does sound fancy, but guess what? We use it in our daily lives without even realizing it.

Strategic thinking is like having a game plan to reach your goals. It’s what your favorite athletes or video game characters do in the middle of their game. Let’s break it down with some simple daily life examples you likely have gone through earlier in your life.

· Playing Chess: Imagine you’re playing chess. Winning is your goal. You don’t move your pieces randomly; you need a strategy. Maybe you aim to control the center of the board or protect your king. Your strategy adapts to your opponent’s moves. That’s strategic thinking — making purposeful moves.

· The School Project: You have a big project due in a few weeks. Instead of last-minute chaos, you create a plan. Research first, outline, write daily, and finally edit and present. That’s using strategic thinking to succeed.

· The Soccer Game: Your soccer team is tied in the final minutes. The coach says to defend, but there is only a minute left. Do you take a calculated risk and go for the winning goal? That’s a strategic decision based on the situation.

· The Treasure Hunt: Picture yourself on a treasure hunt with a map and clues. You don’t wander randomly; you follow the clues step by step to find the hidden treasure. That’s a strategic approach — following a plan to reach a goal.

So, strategic thinking is like having a plan and making smart decisions to reach your goals, be they in games, school, sports, or adventures. It keeps you focused and helps you make the best choices. In its simplest form, ‘strategy’ means a plan to achieve a long-term goal. It starts by identifying a goal and then coming up with a plan for how to achieve it. There’s no hidden meaning here.

Now, how do you apply this at work? There are two parts to strategic thinking:

1. Becoming Capable: Are you capable of thinking strategically?
2. How to Do It: What steps should you take to think strategically?

Section 1: Skills to write, tell a story — Built over time

First, let’s start with the basics and discuss what strategy is. This will help us identify the skills needed to create a strategy and what it takes to be capable of creating one.

I like to break a strategy down into four areas: 1. Intent 2. Analysis 3. Plan 4. Measurements

You might find different breakdowns if you search online, but they all boil down to these key aspects. Keeping it simple works, and these areas are distinct from each other.

Intent: This is your goal — what you want to achieve. It often involves thinking big, thinking deep, and thinking long. For instance, saying, “We want to increase revenue in this market segment for this product by x% in y time” is a specific goal, not necessarily a strategy.

Some famous business strategy examples include:

• Tesla: Playing the long game
• Airbnb: Forgetting all about scalability
• Toyota: Humility can be the best business strategy.
• HubSpot: Creating an industry and then dominating it
• Apple’s iPhone launch shows tremendous restraint.
• PayPal: Daring to challenge the status quo
• Spotify: Changing the Rules of the Music Industry

In simpler terms, more relatable to your work, it might be:

• We want to establish our presence in the mobile market and be a market leader for fitness management in 3 years.
• We want to establish ourselves as the default choice for all educational institutions in Europe when they think of how to track financial aid for students.
• We want to modernize our technology infrastructure.
• We want to reduce marketing spending.
• We want to cross-sell XYZ supplies along with purchases.
• We want to dominate the hip-hop music streaming market in the XYZ region.
• We want to become a multi-sided marketplace for XYZ.

You need to envision where you want to be. Your strategy includes some vision and mission statements — it’s the dream section.

Analysis: This is where you gather data and evidence. Why does your intent make sense? What’s the market opportunity, the competition, the risks, and the challenges? Use frameworks like SWOT, a balanced scorecard, OKRs, the Five Forces, PEST analysis, and more.

This step would talk about the market opportunity, why your team or company is in the best place to take advantage of this market opportunity, who the competitors are, what risks and challenges you might face, etc. This step connects your intent with the possibility for your company or organization at the right time.

Plan: Now you turn possibility into reality. Your plan breaks down the intent into manageable steps. It’s like climbing to the top floor, one floor at a time — you need a sequence, priorities, and value at each step.

You usually create the plan with validation steps, which lead to Measurements. Each step must be measurable with a check-in point that validates your intent. If you’re on track, great. If not, it’s time to adjust — either your plan, your analysis, or even your intent. You must go back, one step at a time. If your validation fails, you should never proceed without adjusting.

Assuming you follow these steps, you have a strategy.

Sure, there are finer points, but these four are the essentials: intent backed by analysis, a well-thought-out plan, and measurements to track progress.

Section 2: Expertise and depth to define one — Learned over time

Now, step back and ask, “What does it take to do this?”

It means transitioning from focusing on daily tasks like project management to becoming a strategic leader who anticipates growth opportunities and risks. A strategic leader solves problems, makes sound decisions, and navigates a changing environment.

Strategic leaders work in ambiguity, consider ethics, adapt their communication style, and deeply understand their organization and industry. They keep an eye on day-to-day tasks while looking to the future for new opportunities. Strategic thinkers are lifelong learners who learn from mistakes, anticipate unintended consequences, set clear goals, and confidently communicate their vision.

Skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and management are crucial. Characteristics like an open mind, curiosity, compassion, optimism, challenging assumptions, systems thinking, and awareness of the industry and the world all play a part.

It is a lot, isn’t it? You will now see yourself as one of those important people at the office. It is you!

Ok, how do you become a strategic thinker? You work at it.

Section 3: Trust to lead, execute, and deliver on one — Earned over time

Remember my magic formula: Learn, Execute, Duplicate. This is achieved over time. Invest in yourself. First Keep learning about your team, organization, company, industry, customers, and more. Execute on those learnings, do study and analysis, talk to others, review, and get feedback, and then learn some more. Become great in execution and generating value.

Work on the duplicate step. Demonstrate your thinking and plans to others. Share your insights, mentor, and invest in people. You must work on the hard things, speak up, manage your peers and superiors, and challenge the status quo. You can see the connections with the various articles I published in the last few months. They are not random. They all connect back together. Duplication is the hardest step.

If you ask me tomorrow in a one-on-one, how does one duplicate themselves? My answer will be, you know the Control-C and then Control-V; that is it.

However, if you started to share your thoughts with folks, started to identify how you can influence them, started to invest in people, basically started on your journey, then you came with the specific people or process situation. We will brainstorm and ideate together and identify paths you could take. We can engage folks from the larger network, from this newsletter community, from your professional network, and from other LinkedIn groups. We could refer to books, other articles, blogs, videos, and podcasts. The answer always depends on the situation, is specific to you, is specific to individuals you are working with, is specific to a team, company culture, and everything under the sun. This is the real work. There’s no shortcut to being a strategic thinker.

This is the most important part to understand. No one cares about your strategy document; they care about you, your intent, and the outcome. When people join you in creating a plan, you have a team ready to execute and validate each step, that is the nirvana!

A strategy document is a lifeless artifact.

If you want to be a strategic thinker, make yourself someone others want to follow and trust. Someone whose strategy documents others will review, give feedback, and get engaged. Whose strategy would be acted on? Whose strategy would be executed? Teams would come together to validate, and the right intent would be achieved.

So, what do you want to be? You must identify tips and tricks that help you navigate this journey. However, to be effective, you must do the hard things. There are no shortcuts, but the journey is worth it. Don’t just stay busy; invest in yourself, manage up, speak up, and be out there.

That’s how you create a strategy people believe in and join you on the path to success.

I know this is a long read. However, I hope you see how different things come together. Take the time this weekend if you can. It is your commitment to continuous learning.

Until next time, Cheers,

Amit

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