We can all do it? What, why and how to do it better!
What is strategic thinking?
When we are in business with questions – does what I do connect to the big picture and how? Does it connect to the direction of the organization and its needs? Of the business? To my personal development, we are engaged in strategic thinking. Strategic people make a good connection between ideas, plans and people . They connect correctly and sometimes surprisingly and create connections that others do not see. The way to do this is, among other things, to understand the interests well and create relationships that lead to a common cause.
But first, strategic thinking means that we start from the end. Where do we want to get to and what will it look like, why is it right, important and good, what will it allow customers and our company to do. When this understanding is clear, from there we can start planning how to do it. Strategic thinking is actually thinking that looks ahead and plans how to get there. It’s less about just going with the flow and seeing what happens.
How do you do it?
Create time for thinking
The basis for thinking in general, as well as strategic thinking, is – a little time. It is impossible to maintain thought processes when constantly preoccupied with the endless bounces, problems, and glitches of everyday life. And no, it is not because “it is the job” to answer every glitch and every bounce as if everything depends only on you, but rather that it is our choice. The willingness to do anything that comes our way without asking the three important questions:
Is it important, is it important now, and is it necessarily important that I do it?
When you make this stop, it turns out that you can take some of the bouncing off and make time for thinking. And yes, it frees up time. One of the challenges is not to be alarmed by the time that has been created. This is because free time is often perceived by us as indicating our insignificance. True, it can be a little alarming at first to have a moment without concrete action, without labor with both hands or a keyboard. To be in a state of stagnation, a kind of “empty” time. But precisely this time when you are not really performing an action but are staring at unfocused, irrelevant thinking, apparently leads to very high creativity. This has been proven in recent studies on the brain that precisely staring time or as it is commonly called – boredom, precisely this time allows for a different kind of thinking that is more creative and different. That does not do the same thing.
How do you create time for thinking? One of the best techniques that works is to schedule a thinking session with yourself. An hour once or twice a week, maybe in a quiet office, maybe in front of the sea. It’s a mistake to think that time for thinking is a privilege. Quite the opposite. Without time for thinking, we work in an automatic, robotic “mode.” We do what our brain can handle at that moment, what the brain already knows and understands. Nothing new, different, creative, or groundbreaking. On the other hand, taking some time to think will allow us to change our usual ways, and reach new realms of observation, possibilities, and solutions.
Ask strategic questions
- Is what I am doing still right and in the best interest of the matter?
- What can and should be done differently?
- What are the chances and risks of this step?
- What could be at risk if you think about it a little more?
- What can lead to surprising results if you think about it a little more?
This thinking is a great start to getting to…
To make decisions
Decision-making . Ultimately, after all the great thinking and understanding of the path, the desire is for the strategy to be realized in reality, and this is what requires us to make decisions. At the intersection of thinking and practice. This is the time when questions arise that challenge, provoke, and sometimes require us to reflect on things again.
- How much to focus on and what to give up
- What are the chances of this happening and how long do we have to wait?
- What to do who to activate
- How far to go, how much to invest, how much to dare…
Ultimately, at this stage, we need to muster courage, authenticity, honesty, and simplicity. And, no less important, the agreement and understanding that we will not always know exactly what is right and that we will not always succeed. Every decision has a risk, but the risk of not deciding, of investing in everything, of spreading resources over everything due to the fear of making a decision, is an even higher risk.
Build a strategic thinking process
What does it take for you to be more involved in strategic thinking processes? Investing time in thinking, observing the situation, creativity and decision-making. Finding new, creative and simple ways to connect people, ideas and plans. Connecting worlds that you didn’t dare to think about, rolling your mind into different realms and examining what it means and what it can bring. And finally making decisions between what to do now and what is a beautiful dream to save for another day.
Adopting strategic thinking as a tool makes you a central axis in planning the future and creating the path, as a partner in the journey. A “mode” of planning thinking and creativity is always a good and meaningful, intriguing and fascinating position to be in.
