My theme this month is strategic thinking – a topic that makes my eyes shine and my tail wag. In the first article here, I talked about it being a mindset which comes naturally to some and with hard work to others. In the second article, I talked about it being a discipline – which is what is required especially if you are not a natural. Since then I have been pondering whether one can create a culture of strategic thinking. I believe one can.

Let’s start with a couple of definitions.

Definitions
Firstly, here is my definition of strategic thinking: It is the discipline of noticing and responding to potential game-changers in order to have the advantage even in an uncertain and chaotic business environment. Find out more in this previous article.
It has three components:

1. Spotting gamechangers – either opportunities to change the game or threats to your business because the game is changing with or without you;
2. Designing a response that creates strategic advantage;
3. Selling that response to key stakeholders as the gateway to implementation

Secondly, what is meant by culture? Again, I have a simple definition which I like: culture is the way we do things around here.

So is it possible to create an organisation where strategic thinking is just something that happens around here? And if so, how does one do it?

What You Say is all Important
Culture has everything to do with what leaders in the organisation do and talk about. Every conversation a leader has with people at various levels in the business is an opportunity to be a catalyst for strategic thinking. I think it starts with your vision.
​
Does everyone in the organisation know what the vision is? Do you talk about it at EVERY opportunity? Do you overtly weigh every decision up against its impact on the vision? Does every other manager do the same? After all, a vision is not just a poster on the wall! It is a clear statement of where you are going. You build your vision into the culture by talking about it at every opportunity. You link every triumph and every setback to your vision. You make a link between every new initiative and the vision. You give people feedback on their contributions in relation to the vision. Everything everyone does or does not do leads you towards or away from the vision – make sure that comes across loud and clear.

Make Your Expectations Clear and Ask Strategic Questions
Does everyone know that they have a contribution to make to the achievement of the vision? Do they know that EVERYONE is expected to think strategically? You can make this happen with the questions you ask. Here are some examples of strategic questions:

• What implications do you think that will have for our business?
• Does that pose an opportunity for us or a threat? How do you believe we should respond?
• What do you think we should stop doing? What should we be doing instead?
• How will that move us towards our vision?
• How is that likely to look in 5 years’ time? What do we need to do now in order to be prepared?
• How could we replicate what you are doing here to other parts of the business?
• How could we take that and apply it here?
• What would happen if we just stopped doing that?

Have Rituals That Encourage Strategic Thinking
Do you have periodic “rituals” that encourage everyone to contribute to the strategic thinking in the business? These would be rituals that encourage bottom up sharing of ideas. These might include:

• Periodic focus groups that look at specific aspects of the business or how you do business;
• Regular board, divisional and department meetings that only consider the business in relation to the future;
• Town Hall meetings that encourage exploration of or presentation of strategic ideas;
• Regular strategic reviews – you could use these questions:
  • What have we been trying to achieve?
  • What have we actually done?
  • What has/is working?
  • What hasn’t worked/isn’t working?
  • What lessons have we learned?
  • What do we need to do now?

These are all in addition to your annual strategic breakaway.

Recognition and Reward
Finally, make sure that you reward behaviour that contributes to the achievement of the vision. All achievements against KPIs should show the contribution these make to the achievement of the vision. Individuals, teams and divisions that make a direct contribution towards the realisation of the vision should get recognition and maybe even tangible rewards. I personally don’t believe it is about the tangible rewards in the form of bonuses. I think it is very much about the public recognition people get for their contributions. A more powerful reward than a bonus is probably the prestige of being able to participate in really interesting projects – so think about how your best thinkers can be included there.

If every manager in the business is behaving as I have described here, before long you will find that thinking strategically is quite simply how we do things around here.

Contact Me
If you recognise that you need to start developing your strategic thinking skills and disciplines, email me on [email protected] and let’s discuss your coaching programme.

In my previous article I looked at strategic thinking as being a way of looking at the world. This time I want to pay attention to the notion that strategic thinking is also a matter of discipline. I have written about this previously here, but today I want to take that thinking further. By the way, this article and that previous article are best read together.

We live in a hurly burly world of busyness and the consequence of that busyness is that it keeps us constantly on the field and in the game. That means that we are unable to see the overall game with any perspective

Get Up Onto the Balcony
We need to create times when we can get off the field and up onto the balcony where we can see the entire field of play.
Picture this analogy in your mind’s eye. You have left the field of play while the game continues. You walk up onto the balcony and you and some of your colleagues are leaning on the railing looking at the game being played and commenting on what you are seeing. You have created some distance so that you can notice things you cannot see when you are on the field. You notice what your own team is doing and not doing. You notice who has brought their A game, and who is off form. You notice what the other team is doing and not doing. You observe the referee and make judgements of how the game is being managed. You notice the changing condition of the pitch. You notice the changing weather.
And while you notice all these things you draw conclusions about what these things are likely to mean for your own team and the outcome of the match.

Many Minds Expand What is Possible
The fact that there is a group of you doing this means that you collectively see more than one person could possibly see; because you all see things from your own point of view, your discussion expands everyone’s point of view; you can see threats and opportunities from the balcony that you cannot see when you are on the field. And of course, as with any armchair sportsman you can see EXACTLY how the game should be played. Furthermore, you see FAR more than the ref does – so much so that you wonder aloud if he is watching the same game!
This is what becomes possible when a group of thinkers (it can be a team; it can be a think tank of people who do not necessarily work in the same team) focuses their collective brain power on studying what is going on in your business field of play. Because life is so busy and runs away with us, it is valuable to put a thinking session into your calendar every quarter, and make sure you invite some really great thinkers.

Think of it as a Think Tank
Who should be in your think tank? These are my views:

• People who read widely: newspapers; business publications; industry journals; technology blogs; biographies and autobiographies; business books; even novels. People who read widely have an broadened sense of the world out there and of what is possible. They know stuff beyond the business, and they have imagination.
• People who have a wide range of interests that include subjects both germane to and outside of the business. Their minds are expanded by their wide interests and this feeds their ability to imagine possibilities.
• People who question why we do things the way we do – people who ask “why” and “why not”.
• People who generate ideas – they see what is happening around them and have ideas for how to respond.
• People who are all of the above but NOT subject matter experts in your area – they can see what you can’t see; they play the game from their armchair and can see EXACTLY what you should be doing.

Park Your Ego at the Door
Drawing these people into your thinktank probably requires that you park your ego at the door. You need an attitude of curiosity about other people’s thinking so that you can enhance and expand your own. This is not your time to show off how smart you are. You have not invited this group of people in so that you can show that you have it all sorted. Your purpose is the create the opportunity for a group of clever, imaginative people to gather on the balcony, share what they see and imagine an expanded and exciting future.
This means that you need to ask lots of questions and really LISTEN to the answers. You may not agree with everything you hear – but this is not the time to argue or disagree. Rather ask questions that invite them to expand on their thinking or address consequences that you can see to what they propose.

Use a Process
I am always an advocate of using a process, and I offer you PESTLED here, as well as methods for weighing up various ideas. There are many other processes and I’m sure they all are pretty good. Process brings rigor and rigor brings quality. People feel valued when they experience the structure of a process, and they are really stimulated by participating in something that generates quality thinking.
​
Contact Me
If you recognise that you need to start developing your strategic thinking skills and disciplines, email me on [email protected] and let’s discuss your coaching programme.
 
 

What separates the natural strategic thinker from everyone else? It is the way they look at the world. They tend to have a mindset that looks at everything in terms of its potential implications for the future. The natural strategic thinker is adept at spotting gamechangers – either opportunities to change the game or indicators that the game is changing. The first is disruptive and the second is responsive. Strategic thinkers tend to be good at both.

Future-focused lens
What does this mean in practice? It means that they tend to look at everything through a future-focused lens. When they read or listen to the news, their mind automatically registers how this story could or will mean something for their business in the future, and they think about how to respond. They notice that a change in the external environment could be a threat if they don’t find a powerful mitigating response. They spot something in another industry that they could replicate or adapt in order to disrupt their own industry. They see something that their business could do differently from everyone else and create a powerful competitive advantage.

Idealists and Opportunists
In my experience, there are 2 types of strategic thinker.
The first is the idealist whose focus in on how things should be. This is the person whose focus tends to be on “making the world a better place”. Their form of strategic thinking is about identifying and opportunities to achieve a vision of how things should be. They are driven to be better than anyone else and achieve ideals that are often values based.

The second type of strategic thinker is more of an opportunist. That is, they see opportunities everywhere. Opportunities to do something new. Opportunities to do something differently. Opportunities to turn something to their advantage.

Both types of strategic thinker can be disruptive. The idealist will often produce disruptions that will make the world better for the person in the street. Uber and Airbnb are examples of this. They disrupted their respective industries – and created new business opportunities for millions of people – and arguably made the world a better place for travelers.

The opportunist is likely to produce disruptions that force an advantage or mitigate a threat. A fantastic recent example of this is the Checkers 60/60 delivery app – you can get your groceries delivered within 60 minutes of placing your order. The first Covid19 lockdown in March/April 2020 presented both threats and opportunities – people were anxious about going shopping AND they still needed to obtain groceries. This app was launched in 2019 and had been limping along until lockdown. With lightning speed Checkers ramped up their publicity and it became THE delivery app, with over 1,5 million downloads. They capitalized on an event that presented huge opportunities, even while causing untold hardship – and they did it faster than anyone else. In the process, they created nearly 2000 new jobs at a time when the South African economy was hemorrhaging jobs.

So Strategic Thinking Doesn’t Come Naturally to You?
Natural strategic thinkers will think these thoughts and move into action really quickly. So what do you do if you have to admit that strategic thinking is not your natural strength? There are some specific tactics you could use:

1. Make sure that you invite strategic thinkers into your team or into your lane. How do you do this? Include questions that give you a window into how someone thinks in your interview process. You want to hear how they think about the future; the changes they can see or would like to see; the opportunities they might be thinking about in your industry or world. This is not essential at a middle or junior level, but if you are bringing senior people on board, you need some strategic thinkers. Also be aware of the strategic thinkers in the organization around you. They may be outside your team, but that can be an advantage in that they have some distance between themselves and your team’s remit. This is a good thing! They can see things that you and your team can’t see.
2. Encourage your team to read widely and make available to them publications that open their minds. Subscribe to the best industry, technology, economic or leadership publications. Make access to these publications widely available and encourage people to come forward with their ideas. Don’t assume that people will waste valuable working hours frittering away their time online! These are adults. They have jobs to do and deliverables to attend to, so focus on their outcomes, and make information available so that they can contribute to the quality of thinking within the business. Too many (most) businesses are completely inwardly focused. You cannot foster disruptive thinking while only looking inward.
3. Make sure you also read widely and discipline yourself to read through a lens that either sees opportunities to transform things into more of an ideal – is this an opportunity to better serve the world – or that sees opportunities to turn something to your advantage. This is about reading actively. You are not just taking in information passively. You are actively looking for information that could influence your business decisions.
4. Create opportunities for your team to think out loud. Every so often (at least quarterly) set up a team meeting where you will only talk about what is going on in the world, your industry, your customers’ lives and how you can respond to these things in a strategic way. This is about creating possibilities. You will not act on every idea, but you will generate a wealth of ideas, some of which you will act on.
5. Never let a good crisis go to waste! In the unrest in Kwazulu Natal in July 2021, whole towns lost their entire shopping district (amongst other things). This meant that whole communities had nowhere to do their shopping short of taking a long and expensive taxi ride to another town. Within a week, one particular retailer had moved containers (a shop in a box) into those areas so that local people could obtain the basics. They looked at that crisis through the lens of “what do our customers need”.
6. Get a coach! You may NEVER be a natural strategic thinker, but you can learn the skills and you can develop the discipline. An executive coach is trained to ask exactly the kind of questions that will develop your strategic thinking skills, because they tend to have a focus on your future anyway.

For further reading
For previous articles on strategic thinking, go here.

Contact Me
If you recognise that you need to start developing your strategic thinking skills and disciplines, email me on [email protected] and let’s discuss your coaching programme.