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Strategic thinking is seeing the big picture and
strategizing how to get your business from where it is now
to where you want to it to be. It involves mapping out
the steps to get to the desired end, and conceptualizing the
decisions and actions required to get there. You have to set
short-term and long-term goals, establish priorities and
identify risks and opportunities.
Strategic thinking is success oriented and future
oriented. It is about beign successful at a future
point.
Strategic thinking is required to win at Chess and War.
Strategic thinking is also required to propel businesses
above their competitors.
In a game of Chess the object is to
cease your opponent's King. It doesn't matter how many
pieces you have to surrender. Making a few strategic
moves that distracts your opponent by surrendering some of
your pieces puts you in a position where you could cease
his/her King and emerge as the winner before your oponent
realizes what happened.
In war, generals lure their opposing forces to engage
in battles that are insignificant in order to gain
intelligence about their enemy's ability to fight and
sustain themselves and gain insights into their leadership
thinking and to lure them into a false sense of success.
Once they've gain that insight about their enemy they used
that information to strike at the right place and time with
the right amount of force to gain victory.
Strategic thinking has these key elements:
Anticipate:
Be able to anticipate what whill happen in
the future. You have to look at trends, and
key data to be able to anticipate what will happen
in the future as it pertains to your company's
internal operations; your specific industry as well
as to the broader economy in which you operate.
Challenge:
Be prepared to
challenge current beliefs and mindsets. Look
for hypocracy, manipulation and bias. Because
something was done one way for the past 20 years
does that mean it is the right way to do it going
forward? Are trends based on surveys being
manipulated to present a certain picture? Are
experts letting their biases creep into their
analysis? You have to challenge everything to
get at the truth.
Interpret:
You have
to analyze data from multiple sources in order to
develop a true picture of what the trend is.
Rely on only one source will not give you the
ability to draw the right conclusion.
Decide:
You have to make
timely decisions based on the information available
to you. Waiting until you have all the
information you want to make the deicsion could
result in lost opportunities. Making timely
decisions based on the information you have and
winning 70 percent of the time is better than
waiting and loosing 100 percent of the time.
Align:
You must align
the goals of the individuals that work for you with
the goals of your business. Everyone has a key
role to play in achieving the strategic objectives
of the business, hence, aligning their goals with
that of the business is crucial. You can do
this by clearly outlining the strategic goals and
the steps to get there and give your employees
specific roles to play in achieving those goals.
Conduct regular meetings and constantly assess how
everyone is performing in their roles.
Learn:
Learning is
critical to strategic thinking because it enables
you to gain information and make course correction
in order to stay on track to your strategic
objective. Learn by getting feedback from
others such as employees, customers, etc.
Learn from your mistakes. Failure
is not the end, it is an opportunity to learn and
grow.
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business strategic thinking can be applied to achieving a
specific outcome such as gaining a certain market share,
increasing revenues, penetrating new markets, etc. To
engage in strategic thinking for your business you must
answer these key questions:
1. Where is your business now?
Answer this question with respect to the specific area
you want to strategize about. For example:
- 0.5% market share
- revenues = $25,000
- new market penetration
(Hispanic) = 0.1%
-
etc.
2. Where do you want it to be in two
years (specify any length of time)?
You can chose the length of time that you're
comfortable with to set as your goal. It could be 1
year, 2 years, 5 years, etc.
List the goal you want achieve
in the desired timeframe.
List short as well as the long term goals.
For example:
- gain 5% market share in 6 months and 15% market share
in 12 months;
- reach $250,000 in revenues in 6 months and $1,000,000
in revenues in 2 years
- gain 5% of the hispanic market in 1 year and 10% in 2
years
- etc.
3. What steps must be taken to get there?
You have to outline the specific steps that will be
required to get to the desired goal. Be specific.
For example:
- attain 1,000,000 new followers on social media in 6
months and 2,000,000 in 12 months
- get the product(s) in 5 major retail outlets in 6
months and 10 major retail outlets in 12 months
- etc.
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