How to become more strategic

The ability to think, plan and act strategically is a critical skill for success in business, but little training or guidance is provided.  So how do you become more strategic? To answer this question, consider these two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Lucy has been in the company for 12 years.  She arrived as a new graduate and got to grips rapidly with her role, becoming a real expert, someone who people around her rely on. She is an asset to the business, an immensely hard worker, and great things are predicted for her. However, she’s been up for promotion a few times recently and has been knocked back each time. She’s becoming disheartened and is thinking about moving on.  The feedback she received from the most recent interview was that the panel thought she was fantastic but didn’t think she was quite ready to move up to the next level – she’s “not strategic enough”.

Scenario 2: the business improvement team are a great bunch of people.  They can be counted on to drop everything when the production line goes down and will work all hours to get things up and running again. They are super busy, and unfortunately some of their longer-term projects haven’t progressed much over the last few months. The industry is changing rapidly, and new technology is coming on stream soon.  The CEO is concerned that the business won’t be able to keep up with the competition and needs the team to stop the constant firefighting, and “be more strategic”.

In both scenario’s what we are witnessing is a skills gap, and it’s a gap that I have seen frequently in organisations. Here are hard-working, intelligent people doing their very best to deliver, but the results are falling short, either for the business or their own career trajectory. It’s not about a lack of effort or ability, but it is about where that effort is directed.

In two recent large scale training needs analyses I have carried out, the skill identified as the most important for the future success of the business was the ability to think, plan and act strategically, and that’s the skills gap we are talking about here. I have teamed up with the experts in bite-sized productivity training, Emailogic, to co-design a pacey and interactive training session that is specifically targeted at this skills gap: How to Think, Plan and Act Strategically.  We believe that this is a training need that has been largely neglected up until now; what people receive is the vague feedback we saw earlier, to “be more strategic”, but get little guidance on what that means in practice and how to build their skill set.

The starting point in our training is to understand what it means to be strategic and to think strategically, and how this is markedly different from being in an operational mode.  Most of our jobs don’t require us to be strategic all the time, so we need to be able to shift between the strategic and operational modes consciously and purposefully. However, what I have often noticed is that people completely neglect or ignore the strategic aspects of their role. Why is this?  The main reason is busy-ness – strategic thinking is, by its very nature, not urgent, and thus we neglect it in favour of the reams of urgent tasks in our to-do list.  In doing so, we can run the risk that, like the business improvement team we saw earlier, we are running around putting out fires instead of looking at the root causes and making our businesses future-proof.

Once we have understood what it means to be strategic, the starting point of our training, and indeed any approach to creating strategy, is emphasising the importance of devoting time and effort to strategic thinking.   Strategic thinking doesn’t necessarily require any specialist knowledge, but it does involve a shift in horizons and perspectives.  This shift includes looking beyond the usual boundaries of one’s discipline, taking ideas and perspectives from the world outside, and shifting from the short and medium to a longer-term perspective.  One important element of this is horizon scanning, taking the opportunity to think about and analyse trends – in the economy, society, politics and even globally – that will likely impact on our business.  That is not to say we can predict the future, but we can think about and prepare for various different scenarios before they arrive. 

Strategic thinking does need dedicated time; but the good news is that quality is more important than quantity.  20 minutes thinking time scheduled when you are feeling energised and at peak mental capacity is far better than trying to squeeze it in around other activities.   And strategic thinking is often better done with others, more brains produce more ideas and gain more insights.   Some of the classic strategic analysis tools actually work best as frameworks to trigger and structure group discussions of strategic questions.

By focusing on and prioritising strategic thinking before we jump into planning we will ultimately produce better quality plans.   There is a lot of mystique around strategic planning.  In fact, a simple plan, clearly communicated, is better than a thousand complex and over-researched plans compiled by expensive consultants.   When embarking on strategic planning we should avoid some of the typical mistakes.  These mistakes include confusing a budgeting exercise with strategic plan, not being clear on the need for the strategy, or worst of all producing a strategy but putting it away in a drawer and never referring to it all year. 

A strategic plan, regardless of the industry, comprises a few key building blocks.  A long-term vision, strategic goals which bring you towards that vision, operational targets that break down the strategic goals, and a recognition of the risks and how they will be mitigated. The key is coherence between these elements and establishing a clear line of sight between the long-term vision, and people’s everyday work.

The final part of the equation that we address in the training is acting strategically, which means retaining focus and discipline, choosing what to do and what to say “no” to and avoiding the “busy fool” syndrome.  Ultimately this boils down to ensuring that you carve out time and maintain your attention on your strategic goals, sometimes a tall order in this frenetic world where we can be easily knocked off course by the cascade of information and distractions we are constantly subject to.

The ability to think, plan and act strategically is important for both career progression and business success.  As employees - like Lucy in my previous scenario - climb the management ladder they are increasingly expected to leave behind the technical, operational and day-to-day, make connections across the business, spot opportunities and bring out about change and transformation.  At the level of the business as a whole, strategic thinking, planning and action enables companies to out-think the competition, enter into new markets, create new products and keep up with a rapidly changing world.

My 3 top tip’s to be more strategic:

·       Make time for thinking – build it into your daily, weekly or monthly routine. 

·       Open yourself up to external influences – this will spark the best ideas

·       Make sure you know how your day-to-day tasks and activities link to your organisation’s longer terms goals and plans.

To find out more about the training session ‘How to Think, Plan and Act Strategically’ and discover how we can tailor it for your business, call one of the friendly Emailogic team on: 0203 154 6611 or email us on enquiries@emailogic.com

Written by Olivia May, Emailogic Associate