Strategic thinking is all about how you make decisions. If you have a strategic mindset you will have an intelligent and informed process for making decisions.

You will embrace creative thinking, see solutions to problems, innovate, recognize opportunities and know how to take advantage of them.

As a strategic thinker, you’re thinking ahead, planning for the future, focused on long-term success.

Strategic thinkers:

• Look towards and embrace the future;
• Are willing to work hard today to reap the benefits tomorrow;
• Don’t limit themselves to the ‘tried and true’ or ‘best practice’;
• Focus on ideas with the greatest impact and ROI;
• Change their approach when circumstances change;
• Are lifelong learners;
• Are creative and think outside the box.

Non-strategic thinkers:

• Tend to be reactive (wait for guidance or need a lot of advice);
• Prefer the status quo and don’t always take the time to think about long-term goals;
• Usually approach all tasks the same way, without prioritizing by urgency or impact;
• Are hesitant about changing their strategy;
• Are satisfied with their current level of knowledge and skills;
• Are predictable and prefer to follow a set path.

Here are 10 ideas you can use to think more strategically:

1. Ask Yourself Bigger, Better Questions

Strategic thinkers challenge their own assumptions and look at challenges from a number of different perspectives before deciding on the best path forward. E.g. What can you learn from the available data, current and past trends? What does your intuition tell you? What is the worst case scenario and how to create contingency plans to avoid it? What is the best case scenario and how to make it happen?

2. Look for Solutions, Not Problems 

Strategic thinkers don’t simply highlight problems; they always come up with proposals and plans for how to take action. They talk in terms of what’s going well, what could be better, and what’s possible – not what’s wrong or deficient. 

3. Think Outside the Box

Here’s one way to get out of the habit of ‘this is how things have always been done’. Each time you come up with a solution to a problem or a way to achieve a goal, stop and think “is there a different, new way to do this?”

4. Invite and Listen to Others’ Perspective

Brainstorm with your team members, suppliers, clients and network connections asking them questions like: What possibilities should I consider? If you were me, how would you approach this problem? Based on your experience, what do you propose should be the next step? 

5. Consider Opposing Ideas

Playing devil’s advocate with your ideas allows you (in advance) to identify weaknesses in your argument and sharpen the logic skills you need to communicate and execute your strategy. Two questions to get you started are: Should you consider a different perspective? Is there another possibility you may have overlooked?

6. Observe and Reflect
Observe and reflect on your current situation, to make sure any strategy you think of is grounded in facts. Instead of blindly following an assumption, gather as much information as possible to use when designing your strategy. For example, conducting interviews with new and old clients to identify the different ways they use your product or service.

7. Embrace Change
Too many entrepreneurs are reluctant to change their strategy and focus, even when circumstances change. Strategic thinkers see the need for change before anyone else, because they always have one eye on the external circumstances (e.g. COVID restriction) and make the time for thinking how to use the change to improve and get better results (e.g. embracing remote working).

8. Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize. 
“Urgent” is the enemy of “Important.” Always act on those tasks that will give the greatest benefits today, and leave less impactful tasks for tomorrow. Ask yourself, “what is the one task I can do today that will leverage the most benefit?”

9. Free Yourself from Execution

It’s impossible to find time to think big-picture when you’re constantly task-switching or if your day is packed with meetings. You can cure this by empowering your team to take on tasks that would offer them a learning opportunity and look for meetings that you can eliminate or outsource.

10. Be Willing to Take Risks 

Realize that just being alive is risky. And often – the risk of inaction (opportunity loss) is higher than the risk of taking action and failing. Make it a habit to make every mistake or failure a learning opportunity – thus reducing the long-term risk to minimum.

Now It’s YOUR Turn

For five minutes… come up with as many ideas as you can… what could YOU do to think more strategically?