Dive deep for pearls of strategic insight
These three A’s of strategic thinking will help you constantly generate new lenses through which to view your business.
A survey conducted with 400 talent management leaders found that the No. 1 most valued skill in leaders today is strategic thinking. Unfortunately, research with 154 companies found that only three out of every 10 managers are actually good strategic thinkers.
The idea that leaders need to be strategic is really no surprise. The deeper question is: “How can you continually hone your strategic thinking skills to thrive in today’s ever-changing business landscape?” Here’s the pearl of great opportunity: The deeper you can dive into your business and resurface with strategic insights, the more valuable you’ll become to your organization.
Strategic thinking is defined as continually generating business insights to achieve competitive advantage. Strategic thinking is different than strategic planning. Strategic planning is the channeling of business insights into an action plan to achieve goals and objectives. A key distinction between strategic thinking and strategic planning is that the former occurs on a regular basis, as part of our daily activities, while the latter occurs periodically (quarterly, semi-annually or annually). Strategic thinking is using a new lens to view the business. It’s not about adding more work. It’s about enhancing the view of the work and improving one’s ability to perform it.
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