Many leaders have shared with me that they fear their organizations are drifting off course from their desired strategic pathway. They also are not sure exactly how to get their organization back on course. However, they believe that the only way to correct this problem is for themselves and their teams to think strategically and to make better strategic choices.
I agree with this perspective and I believe the challenge is that thinking strategically is not an easy choice for many people in leadership positions because they are not sure how to think strategically. From many decades of working with a wide diversity of leaders and after doing an extensive amount of reading about leadership, I believe that thinking strategically involves three core skills sets.
First, when a leader thinks strategically, they must have contextual intelligence and show a high degree of contextual vigilance. Like the concept of emotional intelligence, an individual with contextual intelligence is adept at understanding the trends that are happening within the big picture, i.e. their industry and society as a whole. Some people call this connecting the dots and understanding why things happen the way they happen. But the best people I’ve met who display contextual intelligence are vigilant and constantly monitoring large and small changes within the bigger picture. They focus on changes in the patterns and whether they will create any degree of risk for the company. This discipline has been famously summarized by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen in their book, Great By Choice, with the phrase “they zoom out before they zoom in.”
Second, when a leader thinks strategically, they must be able to understand and explain strategy. Many leaders think this is a no-brainer. Yet, when asked to explain what is the concept of strategy and why their company chooses the strategy they currently have, the answers I receive are often poor and very confusing. As a result, this becomes an important coachable moment. If we expect people to think strategically, then all involved must be competent in explaining the what and why of strategy. If not, then the only outcome will be more confusion and faster organizational drift.
Third, when a leader thinks strategically, they must be able to create a work environment that results in operational excellence, i.e. the capacity for the company to generate continuous improvements. When an organization is drifting in a sea of complexity, thinking strategically must translate into operational improvements. If the work environment is built upon a foundation of trust, respect and integrity and all involved can commit to decisions and the subsequent plans of action plus hold one another accountable for delivering on these plans, then the result with be the achievement of our collective results. However, if there is the absence of trust, a fear of conflict and a general lack of commitment to planned action, then the ability to think strategically will not translate into effective organizational change and ultimately be a waste of individual and group time and energy.
With the above three skill sets as a foundation for thinking strategically, I want to add three more actions that I have witnessed which have helped leaders think strategically. First, they listen strategically. On the surface, this may seem like I am stating the obvious. But after careful observation, this action is more than just keeping one’s ears open and receiving sound waves. Leaders who think strategically have the ability to suspend their own perception of what is happening and to focus on what is the other person’s mindset and philosophy about what they are doing, and why things are happening. Years ago, I read an article that referenced this concept by the following phrase, namely “opposable thumbs/opposable mind”. As the thumb is an opposable digit to the pointer finger and thus gives someone the ability to pick up an object, an effective leader is able to grasp another person’s perspective. This gives them the ability to understand what is happening at the individual and group levels and therefore be able to determine what is the best course of action.
Second, they frame things strategically. After they figure out what is causing what to happen within the work place or our larger society, i.e. an analysis of causality, and after they determine the correct decision architecture to deploy, these leaders are able to explain what decisions or actions need to take place in a clear and coherent manner. But the key to doing this is to place that action within the context of the larger picture and to do it in a manner that creates urgency but not a panic. The outcome of being able to frame things strategically is to paint a picture that business as usual is totally unacceptable if not dangerous and will produce serious strategic and operational problems during the coming years.
Third, they network strategically. As Herminia Ibarra explains so well in her book, Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), “When challenged to think beyond their functional speciality and to concern themselves with strategic issues to support the overall business, many managers do not immediately grasp that these are also relational - not just analytical-tasks…. Stepping up to leadership, therefore, means not only learning to do different things and to think differently about what needs to be done but also learning in different, more self-guided, peer-driven, and external ways.” When leaders choose to network strategically, they build connections with a diverse collection of people in order to gain greater perspective and understanding. This helps them prevent macro-myopia and spatial blindness, i.e. the inability to see the whole system or the movement of trends because they have become solely focused on a singular part of a system. By networking strategically, they are constantly building a greater degree of clarity about why things are happening and to translate this into a discipline of how things need to happen within the company so there is a consistency in results at the strategic and operational levels.
Thinking strategically is a complicated action. It takes time, patience and personal humility to become good at it. With the right degree of support and coaching, individuals can get better. But the first step is to commit to working on it and not assuming it will happen just because one has achieved the title of leader or manager. As with the rest of life, a personal discipline to learn more and to seek out assistance along the way will make a big difference.
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