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What is Strategic Thinking?
Home » Executive Coaching » Strategic Thinking » What is Strategic Thinking?In the same way that you’d never start out on a cross-country road trip without a reliable map, a smart company doesn’t leave the future to chance. Instead, its leaders develop a vision for what they want the organization’s future strategic profile to be, and then pass along that vision to the rest of the company. This, in essence, is Strategic Thinking. It’s asking the tough questions such as: “Where are we now?” “Where do we want to go?” and “How will we get there?” It is a particular mode of thinking with specific and clearly perceptible characteristics.
In many ways, Strategic Thinking is similar to painting a picture. It takes strategy, effort and vision to put the right brush strokes on the canvass to create the picture you have in mind for your organization. And it is this finished picture that drives the direction, nature, and composition of the business. As a result, decisions that fall within the parameters of this view are taken and implemented, and decisions that do not are rejected.
Strategic Thinking is also hypothesis-driven. Companies with a strategic mindset often ask, “What if…?” They are unafraid to challenge existing assumptions and actions. This, of course, can potentially lead to new and more appropriate courses of action. Organizations with leaders who think strategically are well on their way to a bright and successful future.
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