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In today’s agile, fast-twitch, act-fail-iterate environment, strategic thinking often gets a bad name. One entrepreneur friend of mine told me: “Strategic thinking is just an excuse to slack off.” If you are an internet startup, have little revenue, and no profits, then keep iterating through tactical options until you succeed – or fail. For the rest of us strategic thinking is rapidly becoming a critical success capability.
Strategic Thinkers
Strategic thinking can be some of the most difficult work you do because it requires you, on a regular basis, to shut out a vast number of daily demands and focus on the much less concrete possibilities of the future. Many people confuse strategic thinking with visioning and strategic planning. They see strategic thinking as little more than planning the tactics of the future. It is a little more complicated than that. Yes, strategic thinkers spend a portion of their time considering the future but less directly than you might imagine. Good strategic thinkers:
Pay attention to the margins. Much of what will affect your future success is already here at the periphery of your current business boundaries. Strategic thinkers closely examine what is happening around them looking for out-of-context clues to the near and distant future.
Challenge conventional wisdom. Sometimes it is what we know that hurts us. Conventional wisdom is only wisdom today. In all likelihood, it will be folly tomorrow. Believing the status quo will not change (or at least will evolve slowly) continues to be executives single leading error. Strategic thinkers challenge their own thinking as well as that of others to break out of their current thought-limiting paradigms. Challenging other’s thinking is difficult. Challenging your own thinking is even harder.
Are comfortable with ambiguity. The goal of strategic thinking is to arrive at a decision and take action, but before you get to that point, there is a lot of ambiguity to deal with. Strategic thinking by its very nature is an exploration of the unknown and ambiguous. Strategic thinkers give themselves time to let ideas percolate before committing to a significant course of action.
Build a consensus. You can’t strategize in a vacuum. As strategic thinkers are developing their thoughts, they are checking in with others, whose opinion they respect. At first they are not seeking agreement but challenge. They know their ideas need refining and clarifying. They also recognize their strategies will never come to fruition without broad support.
Learn and iterate. Strategic plans are built once a year but strategy crafting is a continuous, iterative process. Strategic thinkers don’t just think strategically at planning time. For them it is a continuous process. They are constantly re-evaluating their thinking in light of the current situation and are not afraid of changing course when necessary. They see strategy as constantly evolving.
The bottom line:_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Strategic thinking is hard and often thankless work. Strategic thinkers frequently work off the grid promoting their ideas until they are accepted. They often see the implementers get the accolades for what was originally their idea.
Tagged: Different Thinking, Strategy 
