What is strategic thinking?
- Think ahead, identify trends and devise strategies to take advantage of opportunities.
- Understand the range of issues and variables that impact company’s success and applies these to decision making.
- Recognize vulnerabilities and competitor threats.
- See farther into the future.
- Think globally.
To improve in strategic thinking, ask yourself:
- What do we do best?
- What could we improve?
- How can we turn our strengths into opportunities?
- What obstacles do we face?
- How can I challenge current assumptions about what we do?
- Who will be our competitors five to ten years from now?
- How will people use our products/services in the next ten years?
- How will new technologies affect our markets?
- What discoveries or trends in other fields will be useful to our business?
- How can political and economic changes affect our business?
- When did I last take steps to turn strategic vision into reality?
- With whom should we partner to increase our competitive advantage?
Train your strategic thinking
- Ask your manager for feedback on your understanding of business trends and global implications
- Work to articulate the business issues of your team. Ask others to challenge your assumptions and projections.
- Research a key competitor, analyze their products, presente recommendations for dealing with them at a staff meeting.
- Collect data on your customers and what their needs and requirements are. Analyze what competitors are doing in respond to customer needs.
- Discover how different units are working and how each might benefit from solutions and technologies that overlap.
- Develop a forecast for the business future of your team or unit. Ask for feedback.
- Develop a strategic plan to take advantage of the global business implications of your products/services.
- Identify a business problem or deficiency in your unit and write a plan to solve it.
- Think four years ahead and identify what different industries will have moved into your markets.
- Get involved in a cross functional group and look at the business from different points of view.
- Challenge your strategic thinking. Ask yourself if you are maintaining a balance between futuristic thinking and present need for accomplishments.
