Strategic Thinking

by Dorie Clark

Strategic thinking is the ability to think on a big and small scale, long and short term, and into the past and the present. While strategic thinking is a valuable skill for everyone in an organization, it becomes increasingly essential as you ascend the ladder. In fact, you may have a difficult time being promoted or succeeding as a leader without it. Yet, no one formally teaches strategic thinking—so it's critical to take the initiative and learn how to do it yourself. This course teaches managers and leaders how to use strategic thinking to guide the direction of their teams and come up with solutions to key business problems. Career and personal branding expert Dorie Clark shows you how to carve out time to think about strategy, gather data, learn from the past, create a vision for the future, and implement strategic thinking within your team.

 

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1.1 Welcome

Welcome text

Strategic thinking is a valuable skill for everyone in an organization, but it becomes increasingly essential as you ascend the ladder. In fact, you likely won't be promoted and can't succeed as a leader without it. You stop being evaluated on whether you can implement a task or a project, and you start being asked to conceptualize it and make determinations about what's valuable for you, the company, and other employees to be spending their time on. That is a completely different skillset, yet no one formally teaches you how to do that. It's not like corporations offer a strategy school. You have to take the initiative to figure it out. That's why we're here today. I'm Dorie Clark. I teach for Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and I'm the author of Reinventing You and Stand Out. I write frequently for the Harvard Business Review and elsewhere about strategy. And I'm excited to share those insights with you. In this course we'll start by really understanding what strategic thinking is and how you can carve out time to do it. Along the way, we'll explore how to learn from the past and take into account the future when developing your strategy. And finally, I'll show you how to implement all this with your team. Being strategic and being perceived by others as being strategic matters for your career. So let's make it happen.

"Strategic thinking is a valuable skill for everyone in an organization, but it becomes increasingly essential as you ascend the ladder."

"In fact, you likely won't be promoted and can't succeed as a leader without it."

1.2 What You Should Know

What you should know text

Some people may feel their bosses don't want them to be strategic. That they're just hired to implement, and being a strategic thinker is just as likely to get you punished. That may be true for some pathological bosses, but in almost every case smart leaders in an organization, whether that's your boss or other leaders you can build relationships with, will value it if you identify ways to make organizational processes smarter and the way you spend your time more effective. Don't sell yourself short by not pursuing strategic thinking. It is essential to your advancement. There are no prerequisites for this course, aside from an open mind. Anyone can become a more strategic thinker, and you can and should practice that skill and flex those muscles on the job. Most people don't take the initiative, so when you do and you show that your ideas are good and take into account the big picture, it marks you as a leader.

"Most people don't take the initiative, so when you do and you show that your ideas are good and take into account the big picture, it marks you as a leader."

1.3 Embrace the Mindset of Strategic Thinking

Embrace the Mindset of Strategic Thinking text

We spend a lot of our lives being told what to do. You're not going to do very well in grade school if you're constantly questioning the teacher and asking, why are we doing it this way, wouldn't it be easier to do it this other way? So it can be hard to rewire ourselves once we graduate and enter the work world. In fact, for quite a while, it doesn't even seem necessary. What you're praised for and promoted for in the early days is being able to master tasks quickly and execute what you're told to do. Write that report according to the standard format. Check. Design that PowerPoint. Process that customer claim. Get that mailing out the door. Check, check, check. But your success at doing what you're told is actually misleading. It's great in the early days but if you keep doing it, your career is going to stagnate, stall and eventually decline. As the famed executive coach Marshall Goldsmith says, "what got you here won't get you there." What's useful in the early part of your career and absolutely mandatory later on is the ability to embrace strategic thinking. It's mandatory for leaders and a skill you have to cultivate. So how do you do it? First of all, it's important to be clear. It's not a one time activity where you create a strategy and follow it forever. Because conditions change, your strategy needs to change with it and that means strategic thinking, re-evaluating new information and adapting accordingly needs to become an ongoing way of life. To cultivate the strategic mindset, think about how you can leverage the following activities. First is questioning assumptions. Why do we do it that way? It's a question every five year old asks 100 times a day which let's be honest is incredibly annoying but when we stop asking those questions, most people go to the opposite extreme. They hardly question anything at all. If you can interrogate habits and practices in a targeted way, you can often uncover new ideas and efficiencies that others simply have never thought about. Why are we filling out two forms? Couldn't they actually be combined? Wouldn't orientation be more efficient if the second half took place in a field office? Whatever it is, sometimes asking targeted questions can unlock great potential. Next is observing. So much of modern corporate life is about doing, about moving faster, quicker, making more things happen. Of course, there's a place for that but that bias means we're also missing opportunities on the other end. If we spend all our time doing, it means we're not really in a position to observe others whom we can learn from or ourselves which means we can't properly refine what we're doing. Even more critically, we're not observing the big picture, the macrotrends and the way the pieces of organizational life fit together. Seeing that, seeing what others aren't even looking at often can give you unique insights about where and how you and your company can gain a strategic advantage. Finally, there's reflecting. For my book Stand Out, I interviewed David Allen, a productivity guru and the author of Getting Things Done. He told me something interesting. To have a breakthrough idea, it doesn't take time. It takes space. What he meant was that a sparkling insight can happen in an instant. We've all experienced that sometimes but it happens too rarely because we're too busy and too preoccupied to let it happen. We have to clear the decks mentally and that means learning to be present and reflect on what we've experienced, kick around new ideas and sit with our thoughts. That's how creativity happens. Questioning assumptions, observing and reflecting are how we can begin to adopt the mindset of strategic thinking.

"What you're praised for and promoted for in the early days is being able to master tasks quickly and execute what you're told to do."

"But your success at doing what you're told is actually misleading."

"As the famed executive coach Marshall Goldsmith says, "what got you here won't get you there.""

"First is questioning assumptions. Why do we do it that way?"

"Next is observing. If we spend all our time doing, it means we're not really in a position to observe others whom we can learn from or ourselves which means we can't properly refine what we're doing."

1.4 Strategy: Not just for Corporations

Strategy: Not just for Corporations text

Everyone knows corporations need to have a strategy. "We're going to expand to Latin America first, "then to Asia. "We're going to launch the sports car "and then the sedan. "We're going to cut our product line "by 50% and only focus on our most profitable items." Those are all potentially solid strategic decisions at the enterprise level. But strategy isn't just for corporations. Teams, of course, need to have their own strategies in order to implement what the corporation wants to do. If we're expanding in Latin America, HR might need to focus on hiring more Spanish and Portuguese speaking employees. Operations might need to rent office space in Sao Paulo and Bogota. And marketing will want to start conducting regional focus groups. The fact that they're doing those things means they're not doing something else. And that's a strategic choice. But finally, it also comes down to the individual level as well. To make yourself maximally effective at work it pays to understand, intimately, your company's strategy and your teams. You could be the best in the world at a given task but if your boss doesn't care about it or consider it relevant, it's almost like it didn't happen. It's not going to get noticed or recognized. You have to align your own strategy and how you spend your time with what will matter and make a difference in your organizational context. What will get them to take notice and say, "Wow, she is really killing it." And keep in mind, strategic thinking shouldn't just extend to how you're spending your time at work. It also impacts your entire career, not just the job you're doing now. Ask yourself, "Where do I want to be in "three years or five years?" Am I on that path now? Or are there things I could be doing to increase the chances of that outcome? Learning a new skill, or getting more international experience, or volunteering to lead a certain committee maybe. Thinking about your career with a long term strategic view can reap major rewards for you down the line.

"Teams...need to have their own strategies in order to implement what the corporation wants to do."
"...strategic thinking shouldn't just extend to how you're spending your time at work."

1.5 The Sequence of Strategy

The Sequence of Strategy text

Vision, strategy, goals, tactics, tools, blah, blah, blah. People often use these terms interchangeably when they want to sound cool and jargony. And it's easy for your thinking to get muddled in the process. What are we actually talking about when we talk about strategy? The key to keeping it straight is thinking about the path from long-term down to short-term. From the big picture down to the details of how it's going to get accomplished. At the far end you have your vision. If we're talking about the individual level, maybe it's that you'll become a leader who helps to change the world. So the question is, how do you do that? That's where strategy comes in. Strategy is about the big picture choices you make, how you decide which road to go down. You decide to take the job in healthcare rather than in finance or you decide you're going to become a specialist in artificial intelligence, because you believe that that's the next important wave. Strategy is being clear and proactive in choosing what you're going to do, and especially, this is the part people forget, what you're not going to do. Once you get your strategy down, it's time to think about goals. How do you operationalize your strategy? How do you make it real? If you want to become a specialist in AI, maybe that means going back to school for a special degree program. Or maybe your goal is reading a book a week on AI for the next year. There are a lot of possible ways to achieve your strategy. And the ones you pick, those are your goals that you work to accomplish. Getting clear on them keeps you honest and ensures you're actually making progress. But goals themselves are often too big to just mark down and say, oh, I'll do that. They're sometimes complex and require a lot of steps. So to make sure you don't get lost or distracted, it's important to get clear on your tactics. You can't just say you're going to read a book a week and then expect it to magically happen. Your tactic could be blocking out an hour in your calendar every morning before you start work or deciding that you're going to read every day on the train instead of listen to music. If you wanted to pursue a degree program, maybe the tactics would involve securing informational interviews with students who are currently enrolled in the program to see if it's a fit. Or taking a prep course to ensure you score better on the admission test. Tactics are the concrete activities you undertake to make your goals, and therefore your strategy, and therefore your vision, come to life. Strategic thinking is a virtue, but to make strategy happen, you have to know how the pieces fit together and what goals and tactics you need to implement to succeed.

"Strategy is being clear and proactive in choosing what you're going to do, and especially, this is the part people forget, what you're not going to do."
"There are a lot of possible ways to achieve your strategy. And the ones you pick, those are your goals that you work to accomplish."

1.6 Make Time to be Strategic

Make Time to be Strategic text

We know it's important to be strategic and that means of course making time for strategic thinking, but that's easier said than done. Most of us are already pushed to the limit when it comes to scheduling, the average professional sends or receives more than 120 emails per day and attends 62 meetings per month. But no one gets paid to write emails or attend meetings. We have to somehow fit in our actual work around all of that. Strategic thinking can seem like a lovely and quaint afterthought, oh maybe one day when I have a little more time. But you know and I know that time is never going to come, it doesn't just happen you have to make it happen. Here are a few ways to build time for strategic thinking into your schedule. You can also download a checklist from the exercise files to help with this. One place to start is to turn off the noise. There are likely times in your day maybe when you commute to work or go to the gym when you're listening to music or podcasts or audiobooks, those are all great things, but it's only recently in human history that we've been able to fill up every spare minute with distraction and information. Instead even once a week turn it all off and just sit with your thoughts, be deliberate about it and use that quiet time to let your mind wander. Ask yourself the big questions that we don't often engage in, where do you want to be going, are you headed in the right direction. Giving yourself space during one of these times on a regular basis can yield powerful insights. Or you can create a weekly blog, many of us have meetings we get roped into and often don't have as much control over our calendars as we might like. But almost all of us have at least some control and we can choose to exercise it more deliberately. Take just an hour a week, ideally at a time when others won't be pressuring you to meet up, let's say late Friday afternoon as the workweek is shutting down. Block that time out on your calendar each week and treat it like a firm commitment just as though you were meeting with someone else. Make that your strategy time and experiment with the best place to do your thinking, maybe it's at your desk, maybe it's taking a walk, you can try it and see. But don't let it get shunted to the side, protect the time and allow yourself to step back and think about the big picture. It's hard to make the time but once you do, you'll probably both enjoy it and benefit from it. You can also enlist a friend, sometimes commitments are easier to keep if you have an accountability partner, we all know that from going to the gym, but the same holds true with strategic thinking. If you have a trusted friend inside or outside your company, maybe that person is also interested in sharpening her strategic thinking skills and you two could create a regular appointment whether it's every week or every month, to meet up, brainstorm, and talk through ideas. You could do it in person or over the phone or Skype, depending on what's possible. Alternately maybe it wouldn't really make sense to engage in strategic thinking with your friend but you could still do it on your own and use each other as accountability buddies. At the end of every week for instance you could get in touch and verify that you did indeed carve out the time you promised for strategic thinking. Or risk embarrassment if you didn't. That could help keep you on track. When it comes to strategic thinking, sometimes making the time for it is the hardest part, but these strategies can help.

"Strategic thinking can seem like a lovely and quaint afterthought, oh maybe one day when I have a little more time. But you know and I know that time is never going to come, it doesn't just happen you have to make it happen."
"When it comes to strategic thinking, sometimes making the time for it is the hardest part, but these strategies can help."

2.1 Consider the Future & Learn from the Past

Consider the Future & Learn from the Past text

To be a strategic thinker you can't just consider the present, the day-to-day in front of you. You have to take stock of the future through evaluating trends and identifying possible scenarios, and interpret the past so you can learn from it. Here's how to master both skills. When it come to the future, of course no one's foresight is perfect. All you can do is guess, but with practice, your guesses can become far more nuanced and informed. One important element is recognizing both macro trends that will impact society, maybe the rise of driverless cars or 3D printing, and micro trends that will impact your industry specifically. Most people don't bother to seek out this kind of big-picture information. They're content to just do their job, and are surprised when disruption happens, but if you stay on top of trends, you won't be surprised. In fact, you'll be far ahead of others, because you'll have had years to strategize and adapt so that when disruption hits, you not only have a plan, but are already implementing it. To effectively monitor trends, it's important to read voraciously, both general interest and industry-specific publications. It's also useful to identify people in your life, whether inside your industry or not, whom you think of as particularly well informed. Maybe it's a university professor in your social circle, or a guy who works at a think tank, or a magazine reporter you run into at conferences. If you see that they watch trends closely, make a point of drawing them out. Ask them what's interesting, or promising, or worrisome to them, and learn from their insights. It's also useful to engage in scenario building, a process that's popular with the military. This is mapping out, literally writing down like a story, multiple possible ways that the future could play out. Any individual scenario probably isn't going to happen exactly as you imagine it, but pieces of multiple scenarios might well happen, and identifying possible weaknesses or opportunities early on can allow you to plan more effectively for them. Finally, when it comes to understanding the past, it's important not just to be aware of what happened, but also why. As humans, we're pretty good at identifying explanations, but a common problem is that after we find one that's plausible we stop looking. Yet oftentimes there's more than one reason something happened. The company may have gone out of business because the founder made bad hiring decisions, but it's possible that the product-market fit also wasn't right, and they relied too heavily on print advertising when they should have done more online. We can't let ourselves be content with simple answers if they don't actually represent the whole story. We need to train ourselves to ask, "Is there more I should be aware of?" Learning to take a holistic view of the past can yield insights that are often hidden to others. Getting good at strategic thinking means we can't afford to just live in the present. We have to develop a healthy intuition about the future and a clear eye to understanding of the past.

2.2 How to Create an Informed Strategy

How to Create an Informed Strategy text

Strategy's important, but here's the thing, it has to be an informed strategy. You can't input faulty assumptions and expect something amazing to just come out of it because you're being strategic. Here are three ways you can become smarter and more nuanced in your strategic thinking. First, recognize that good strategy doesn't have to be innovative. Sure, sometimes it is, and it can be transformative. Everyone would like to invent the next iPhone. But good strategy, as the professor and author Richard Rumelt has said, is about making choices. And those choices don't necessarily have to be something unique, that the world has never seen. Look at history. Review past examples and see what's worked before. That might provide a useful guide for you. Look at what your competitors are doing. There's probably a pretty good reason for it. Now, depending on what that reason is, you may want to copy them or you may want to circle around and do something completely different, but either way, you want to be aware of and informed by what they're doing. Second, think about future trends in your industry. What do you suspect from your research and general knowledge of the field that the next breakthrough in your industry is going to be, then ask yourself will I or my company most likely achieve this breakthrough or will a competitor, and why? That can help you understand where you may be under-investing and should reallocate your resources or your focus. If you have an intuition about where things are going, you might as well position yourself to try to get there first. Third and finally, make sure you're soliciting input from diverse sources. It's tempting to fall back on what's easy, relying on your own opinion or a tight little circle of people from inside your company, the usual suspects. But that's not how you get the best insights, or the smartest answers. What about the actual users of the product or service you're designing? What do they think and what would they find valuable? Can you ask them, or go out into the field and learn from them? What about people who are in your orbit, but wouldn't necessarily weigh in? The interns or the accounting staffer, whomever. The problem with strategic blind spots is you really are blind. You literally have no idea you're missing something so you don't even know to look for it. But if you deliberately make it a practice to bring in new voices and new perspectives, you mitigate against that risk and give yourself a far better chance of uncovering blind spots. If you want to develop good strategies, if you want your strategic thinking to be well-informed, then following these practices can make a big difference.

2.3 Get the Details Right

Get the Details Right text

A strategy that's good in theory isn't much help in the real world. You want your strategic thinking to be relevant and useful, and actually something you can use. That means you can't just figure out what would work best in an ideal world. You need to apply your strategy to this world that we live in. Here's how to do it. First, take some time to map out your assets and allies. What skills or knowledge, or experience do you possess that can help you? If your big focus is expansion into the Latin American market, speaking Spanish is going to be a huge help, along with the rotation you did in the Buenos Aires office. And perhaps your knowledge of social media, if that's going to be a key component of the corporate strategy there. And what relationships, which allies can you tap? Maybe it's your boss, who knows you want to take a leading role in the expansion and is willing to put you forward. Maybe it's the head of communications who knows how skilled you are with social media, and wants to make sure someone knowledgeable has a role in the new initiative. Maybe it's a friend from college, who's now a corporate leader in Chile and can give you on the ground intel about business conditions in the country. Taking note of the assets and allies you possess helps you get clear on how you can leverage them to make things happen. Next, think about what constraints you'll face. Unfortunately, you'll rarely face a 100% positive situation when it comes to implementing your strategy. In addition to assets and allies, you'll also likely have negative factors at work. These are your constraints. Before you come up with a plan that's just a little too rosy, you want to give yourself a reality check and take note of the obstacles you might face. For instance, it could be people. Maybe the VP of operations wants to install his own guy in Latin America and therefore, block you. It could be structural. Maybe you work in a vertical that's never historically been a path to international careers. And at least at this point the pathways are stacked against you. Or it could be cultural. Maybe your company values experience and longevity more than anything else. So it's hard to get your ideas heard when you've only been there a couple of years. Taking note of the constraints you face helps you understand how you can begin to overcome or work around them. Finally, break your strategy down into specific steps. If you really want to accomplish something make sure you take the time to develop specific goals. And identify the tactics you're going to use to get there. For instance, in this example, your strategy is to become a leader in your company's Latin American expansion efforts. Your goal might be to land a specific leadership role in the team. And your tactics might be, over the next six months, understanding who makes the hiring decisions. And making sure your allies recommend you to that person. You can also refresh your Spanish, so it's sharp. And spend your own time researching the Latin American market, through in depth reading, informational interviews and conversations. So your knowledgeable and can hit the ground running. Thinking strategically is important but only if it's realistic and attainable. That's why you have to get the details right.

3.1 Strategic Thinking with Your Team

Strategic Thinking with Your Team text

Strategic thinking by yourself is nice, but oftentimes your goals can't be accomplished alone. You need buy-in and support from your boss, your colleagues and your employees. Here are three ways to cultivate that. First, if you're developing a strategy, do not unveil it at the strategy meeting. That might sound counterintuitive, but the savviest professionals understand that meetings in which strategies are presented are actually ratification meetings. The real work takes place beforehand, systematically briefing key people to get their input and feedback, and addressing any concerns they might have up front. You absolutely do not want to share your lovingly crafted strategy for the first time and have it torpedoed because your boss has a knee-jerk reaction against it, or some key player misinterprets an aspect of it and goes ballistic, or because someone springs a question on you that you hadn't thought through. Save yourself that self-destructive agony and engage in a campaign of premeetings with anyone whose blessing you need to make something work and bring them into the process. That makes it far more likely they'll be favorable toward it, or at least, less unhappy. It's also important when you're mapping out your strategy to identify objections that people are likely to have and create detailed responses. If you set aside time to brainstorm, you can probably come up with 90% of the objections people are going to throw at you. There's no excuse for being unprepared. For instance, let's say you want to launch a new product. You estimate it'll bring in 10 million dollars the first year, great. But you can easily imagine a skeptic might question at how you arrived at that number, so you want to have a detailed explanation ready, showing not just how you arrived at the number, but why your figures are actually on the conservative side. You'll also want to prepare to face objectors, meaning, individuals who feel particularly threatened by your proposal. For instance, if you're suggesting that marketing should take over a function that sales has always held, there's probably going to be some blowback over the perceived loss of control. But if you're aware that's coming your way, perhaps you can make other concessions that would soften the blow or somehow make the arrangement more palatable. You may never win them over completely if you're stepping on their turf, but if you can at least turn the volume down from nuclear to dissatisfied, that's a win. Finally, you'll want to put in place a system to maintain accountability with your team. At a basic level, that might look like sending around an email after every meeting with a recap of what was agreed on and who's doing what. At a macro level, it means reiterating frequently what your timeline is, what the markers are on the path to that timeline and ensuring there is no slippage along the way. The goal of strategic thinking isn't really thinking, it's accomplishing your strategy, and to do that effectively, almost always, you'll need to bring your team on board.

3.2 Measure Your Success

Measure Your Success text

How do you know if your strategy is on the right track? You developed it with the best of intentions, taking into account all the facts you had at the time. But circumstances change and evolve. It's possible that your strategy should, too. How do you know? Here's a three step system you can put in place to measure your progress and keep yourself moving forward. First, identify your assumptions. You can't really know if your strategy is working if you're murky on what success should look like. Yes, you want the new product to be a hit, but what does that mean? How many units sold? By when? How many mentions in the press or new wholesale partners? It's only when you identify and write down your assumptions up front, that you're able to realistically discern how you're doing, and know whether it's time to change your approach. Second, evaluate your progress at regular intervals. It's common in business life to create annual plans. The research by Rita McGrath of Columbia University shows that it's actually not such a useful habit anymore in these fast-moving times. Instead, she discovered that the most successful companies actually create quarterly plans instead, so they're able to be more nimble in adapting to a changed environment. Similarly, whether we're talking about your business strategy or a strategy for your career, it's useful to build in regular intervals where you evaluate progress against your assumptions. It could be quarterly, it could be when you hit certain predetermined milestones, like 10,000 units sold or your first million in revenue, or both. The key is identifying in advance when and how you're going to track your progress, so it doesn't get forgotten or neglected once you're in the midst of implementation, which can get chaotic and messy, at times. You create the order and the structure up front. Finally, document your processes. We're not just doing strategy for strategy's sake. We're engaged in strategic thinking, because we want to get better at making smart decisions. We want to learn and improve over time. But that's not going to happen by itself. You don't get to be a better basketball player by making a thousand lousy free throws. You get to be a better basketball player by practicing a thousand times and studying, in detail, what you did wrong and how to improve it. It's deliberate practice that makes a difference according to the well-known researcher, Anders Ericsson of 10,000 hours fame. Likewise, we can learn to make better decisions and develop sharper strategies if we review our assumptions, check them against those milestones, and see what we got right and wrong. That enables us to see where we're overconfident, and where we've historically had blind spots. The more self-reflection we can manage when it comes to strategic thinking, the better off we'll be.

3.3 Strategic Thinking is an Ongoing Process

Strategic Thinking is an Ongoing Process text

You have failed yourself if you do strategic thinking once, set a course, and blindly keep at it forever. Circumstances change, and you may end up steering yourself wildly off course. But at the opposite end of the spectrum, you've also failed yourself if you can't reliably follow through on your strategy and fall victim to shiny object syndrome, constantly jumping from one thing to the next, following idle whims. How do you balance the two? How can you make strategic thinking, a smart interrogation of your current circumstances, a way of life? Remember, it's important to regularly audit your strategy, to set up milestones in advance, let's say every quarter, and check in to see how things are progressing and whether results are living up to your expectations or might warrant some changes. The general rule, though, is that if you've taken the time to create a thoughtful strategy, you should stick with it unless there's a clear and urgent reason not to. Here are the questions to ask yourself to figure out if that's the case. Are you failing to meet your initial expectations? This is the most obvious case where a change in strategy might be warranted. You thought 200 people would sign up for the program, and only 15 did. You shouldn't scrap things immediately. It's important not to rush to conclusions. But first, look at the tactics you used. Maybe the marketing wasn't affective, for instance. But if you investigate and everything else checks out, maybe the initial premise was flawed, and you need to change your strategy and offer a different program instead. Has there been a major change in circumstances? Sometimes, big, unexpected things happen, and we have to adapt to the repercussions. Your strategy may have involved focusing on a particular line of business because your biggest client was going to sign a huge contract. But when your buyer, the person you knew best and your biggest advocate, decided to leave her position, that sure thing contract suddenly blew up. That's a time to change strategy. Maybe you were going to expand into a new country, and they just experienced a military coup. Probably not the best time to go there. Or you were going to develop a new corporate campus and consolidate all your regional offices, just in time for an economic slowdown that makes it much harder to borrow the construction funds you need. If there's a big development inside your organization or your client's, or even socio-politically, that may warrant a strategy redo. Is there an alternative that's even more promising? This is the place where you're most likely to experience shiny object syndrome, chasing the exciting new thing, so you have to watch yourself carefully here. Let's imagine that expectations have generally been met with your initial strategy, and there hasn't been a major change in circumstances. No military coups, no unforeseen staffing changes. So what could prompt you to abandon a plan that's working reasonably well? Hopefully not much. The only correct answer is something that provides you with a far greater probability for growth and success than the path you're already pursuing. Note that I said probability, not possibility. It needs to be very likely. Now, it's easy to get excited about a new opportunity and convince yourself that this is the right path, because it's new and different. It's possible you might discover something that really is better, that's almost certain to generate 20% growth when you're getting 10% growth now, for instance. But don't delude yourself into thinking you can pursue both opportunities at the same time equally well. If you're truly convinced, run a small test first, to see if your hypothesis pans out, and don't rush into anything without consulting with trusted colleagues and advisors. The bar needs to be very high when you're switching away from a strategy that's already working. Sometimes you do need to change your strategy, but to be effective, you should do it sparingly and strategically.

3.4 The Limits of Strategy

The Limits of Strategy text

There's a famous quote by the boxer Mike Tyson: everyone has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth. That kind of sums up strategy, right? You need to have a plan so you can move forward in the right direction and set yourself up for success. If the job you really want requires a master's degree, you need to get into a program and get that degree. It doesn't mean you'll definitely get the position, but if you don't take action, it's certainly not going to happen. All that makes sense. But what if something happens that isn't in the plan at all? What if your company gets acquired and the hiring and promotion system changes, or you get asked to transfer to Singapore, or the company shuts down the entire business line you were working on? A strategy is great and extremely helpful for normal circumstances, and even for war-gaming known possibilities, but when something truly unexpected happens, strategy has its limits. You didn't plan for this, so what do you do? That's where the real value of strategic thinking lies, because it's not just about fixed plan, it's the ability to think in a strategic way that adapts to changing circumstances. First, people often make the mistake of clinging to past assumptions. The best thing you can do when there's been a disruption is to take an honest look at the circumstances around you, and if your expectations have blown up, admit that so you can quickly move to formulating a new plan. You don't want to be fixated on past predictions so much that you can't take new data into account. Second, respond decisively. This goes with the first point about clinging to past assumptions. A very dangerous corollary to that is that you're dragging your feet on making needed changes. Of course, you want to gather all the facts and see if your information is correct, but if it is, move as swiftly as you can and don't let the situation worsen in front of your eyes. It's probably not a good idea to dramatically overhaul your strategy in ten minutes, but if a crisis is unfolding, take the steps you can to mitigate things now so you have more options later. Maybe that's sending out a press release saying you're aware of the situation, or looking into it, and providing initial guidance to employees. Maybe it's reallocating resources on a short-term basis to go where they're most needed. You do what needs to be done. Third and finally, you'll have to embrace improvisation. That may seem like the opposite of strategy, which is planned out and finely wrought. But improvisation doesn't mean coming up with something, anything, and flailing around. It means going back to first principles. In this case, the vision for your organization, or your team, or yourself, and recognizing that if the current strategy no longer works, you can devise another one that will still help you get to your vision. If you want to be a leader that makes people's lives better, but the program you were working on just got shut down, look around and scan the horizon for other parts of the company that are focused on meaningful initiatives. You look for another path to accomplish your vision. Sometimes strategic thinking means recognizing the limits of a given strategy and being willing to come up with something new that's another, perhaps better, route to your destination.

3.5 Conclusion

Conclusion text

Strategic thinking is a valuable asset to cultivate. In fact, as you ascend in your organization, it's essentially mandatory, but no one teaches you this. And most people don't even realize they need to learn it themselves. We're human, which means we often have good intentions, oh yeah, strategic thinking, but sometimes fall short. That's why we have to keep reminding ourselves about our intentions and work to develop habits so that isn't such an effort to make it happen. Try some small steps today. Create a recurring event in your calendar once a week for strategic reflection time. Or reach out to a friend who might be a good accountability partner. Making the effort today, to steep yourself in strategic thinking, is a competitive advantage that can pay major dividends for you, your team, and your company. Let me know how it goes and shoot me any comments or questions at dorieclark.com.