Nobody is born as a strategic genius, the skills associated with strong strategic thinking can, however, be learnt and applied beyond everyday duties. What are they?
1. Foresight
-
Search for important information outside the mainstream in your industry.
-
Search beyond your current business.
-
Build an external network to help you easily track distant events.
2. Critical thinking
-
Search for the root causes of problems.
-
Challenge current views and approaches, including you own ones.
-
Unveil hypocrisy, manipulation and bias in organizational decisions.
3. Interpretation
-
Search patterns in multiple data sources.
-
Encourage others to do the same.
-
Challenge the prevailing ideas and test more hypotheses simultaneously.
4. Decision-making
-
Make decisions carefully so that you get to the point.
-
Balance the speed, difficulty and quality of your decisions. Do not try to be absolutely perfect.
-
Take stand even with incomplete information and different views.
5. Linking
-
Understand what drives other people's agenda, including the issues that remain hidden.
-
Question complex issues, even if it is not pleasant.
-
Evaluate the degree of risk tolerance and create necessary support.
6. Learning
-
Encourage and exemplarize learning.
-
If you find that you go out of the right direction, change it quickly.
-
Celebrate successes and failures from which you can learn.
-kk-