How to Develop Strategic Thinking: Five Proven Ways

Strategic thinking is one of the most needed soft skills in the VUCA world of a modern person. The good news is that you can develop it yourself. Advice from personal experience

About the author: Anna Naish is the CEO of Granatum, an online platform for collaboration, learning and development of teams and businesses. Manages a distributed team of over 40 people working in eight countries. He has over 15 years of professional experience in the field of HR in Russian and foreign companies, three higher educations, including an MBA in Human Resources Management.

Why Everyone Needs Strategic Thinking

Thinking strategically is knowing what you want and what you are striving for, how to use the available resources on the way to your goal, and what else is required for this. This skill helps to see the end result and think ahead.

Today, when half of the professions are dying off faster than we have time to learn them, the ability to think strategically is becoming more and more important in the life of every person. In today's world, where everything is changing rapidly, it is not so easy to develop a strategy that will not turn 180 degrees in a year or even earlier. But it is quite possible to make a global goal relatively antifragile - for example, to live in abundance in a certain place or work in a place where it is possible to develop professionally and personally. In fact, this is strategy in its purest form: we do not know exactly what will happen tomorrow, but we can learn to understand what to invest precious time and other resources in order to achieve what we want in the end.

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How strategic thinking helps in work

Strategic thinking is critical to business. No wonder it is required in 99% of vacancies for managerial positions. In any company, very different people work, who need to be united and given a vector of movement from point A to point B. But if the manager does not see this final point, the team can go in different directions, and resources will be wasted. This can threaten conflicts, missed opportunities, loss of competitive position in the market, and so on.

However, strategic thinking is necessary not only for top managers. The leader can set a specific goal for the team, and give employees the choice of how to achieve it. When you understand where and why you are going, it will be much easier to think about the best direction - a shorter and less expensive path.

Based on my own experience, I will tell you about two situations in business where you cannot do without strategic thinking.

Anna Naish (Photo: personal archive)

Situation 1 - the company is in a state of uncertainty or unplanned restrictions (for example, during a pandemic)

In such circumstances, businesses need to have several action plans in reserve. It is important for a strategically thinking leader to orientate in the situation in time, assess the current situation and make a decision to change some input or change the route. At the same time, you often have to choose whether to go to the same point B that you originally planned, only slightly adjusting your tactics, or radically change direction in order to survive.

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Situation 2 - a startup plans to scale and reach a new level

When a startup has an idea, they start testing it on MVP (Minimum Viable Product). And here it is very important to immediately see the end point: if something does not work out with the product, you need to decide what to do next - leave the original idea and adjust the audience or rewrite it again. In order for a startup to grow into a full-fledged business in the first year of life, it is important to learn to see the big picture. At the same time, it should have options in case a certain step did not work. Sometimes, just to stay in business, the goal has to change. Strategic thinking helps to realize this need in a timely manner, evaluating external and internal processes and trends.

Five Proven Ways to Develop Strategic Thinking

At first glance, this is a difficult task. After all, it may turn out that the picture of the world, which you considered a ready-made, existing puzzle, is in fact only one of the details of a larger-scale story, and in order to see it in its entirety, you have to work hard.

There are several ways available to everyone to help develop strategic thinking.

1. Connect awareness and constantly ask yourself questions

You can start by regularly reviewing your actions. By constantly asking yourself how specific steps relate to the goals you want to achieve, you train a clear thinking algorithm and form a special habit.

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2. Choose your priorities

In any business, it is important to be able to place accents and choose priorities. They will form a tactic that will show whether the path from point A to point B will be more expensive or cheaper, faster or longer. whether this plan will lead to the achievement of a result or, on the contrary, will move away from the goal.

3. Think positively, try to see opportunities and solutions in any situation

Practice this technique first on positive cases, and then try to analyze negative situations in this direction. Set yourself up not to think about the problem, but to find solutions, try to see opportunities, not obstacles. Even from a negative situation, you can learn a lesson and get bonuses that will eventually help you reach your goal.

4. Expand your horizons and your inner and outer social circle

Remember the theory of five handshakes? We never know for 100% who from our environment can at any moment influence the adoption of specific decisions or even important strategic choices. The more we communicate and learn something new - from books, films, professional communities - the more alternatives we see. Studying and analyzing other people's experience, comparing facts, actions and consequences from the life and practice of other people, we learn to see wider and further, to predict, to complete the picture of the world to the maximum completeness.

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5. Play strategic board and computer games.

The game is one of the most effective ways of teaching not only children but also adults. Here we have a lot to learn from the younger generation. Have you noticed with what pleasure teenagers play strategic board and computer games? In fact, this is more than just entertainment: they stimulate curiosity and observation, train attention and concentration, develop mental flexibility, teach you to find alternative options and resources to achieve your goal. An additional advantage of games is the ability to learn from fictional characters and situations, which automatically reduces stress levels due to the possible “consequences” of a mistake.

These five methods are perfectly complemented by such skills and personality traits as communication skills, creativity, analytical mind, willingness to independently master the necessary skills and accumulate experience gained from different sources, and others.

What your life will be like is up to you. Of course, you need to actively go towards your goal, but it is equally important to have time to “sharpen the ax” - to look far ahead and predict the consequences. Strategic thinking just sets this general vector of movement and allows you to save time and other resources, and most importantly, in the end, still come to the life that you have planned for yourself.