Strategic thinking is an approach or a view that any top manager needs to adopt while thinking about their business into the long-term. It is an indispensable method to realize how to change future desires and outputs into value.
To make a business progress according to a manager or owner's wishes, there needs to be a conscious effort to build a skillset that includes facilitation, negotiation, creativity, team-building and the ability to work through perceived problems with positivity and good humor.
Strategic thinking itself, as a valuable tool, is a process whereby leaders critically examine and evaluate the identifiable implications of their choices in business and explore the available options before making absolute decisions.
Strategic Thinking - Need To Understand More?
Strategic thinking has its application and use in a very many differing circumstances, from devising strategies or policies for a company, arriving at or ironing out a business decision, to even simply gauging or understanding a situation.
The use of a strategic thinking methods allows reverse engineering of the future, so that pieces are placed in position appropriately, rather than ending up there by chance.
Wherever you are, whatever your organization, you dare not blindly go forward without any thinking about the future. Every day, when you live only on the edge, eventually it will return to haunt you. This way of working is just unsustainable, irrespective of stress it can cause.
Strategic Thinking Tactics - Could It Be Worth It?
The key point about strategic thinking is that it provides a solid and researched framework to guide towards planned outcomes that may be some way into the distance. Some of the major organizations in the world have strategic plans or some 50 years in advance. Now, that requires some thinking ahead!
A key point about doing this work is that it will position you much better than others in your market who have taken the shorter term view.
In fact, such strategic thinking work needs a bunch of people who are able to ignore current logic and short-term measures. In the future there will most likely be significantly different scenarios that could easily change the rules of the way we think right now. The best at this factor out as many of the issues likely to lead to failure. That way there are few surprises at all.
There is only a crystal ball to help you (and we all know the value of that!). There are no certainties any more and the world seems to spin faster and faster every year. And by taking a little time out for yourself on an occasional basis to think of possibilities and their impact on you, there will be great value in it.
Strategic Thinking As Work In Progress
Planning and preparing in advance with a vision or purpose is difficult. It is so much easier to just act and take care of the immediate requirements without thinking or planning too much. And, to be frank, this is as good a recipe for disaster in anything but the very short-term that can be adopted.
Yet if there is the aspiration to improve and grow with operational performance, it is imperative to adopt the benefits of strategic thinking. By simply asking what is required as outcomes from actions, and what might realistically will follow from them in terms of unforeseen consequences and then the potential outcomes of that, a tighter fit may well be accomplished, bringing the thinking closer to reality.
This will allow thinking and planning with an eye to the outcome and encourage approaching every interaction with a view to the desired result. It gives a long term focus and not only enables dealing with short term disappointments, it also helps to identify and make best use of leverage opportunities turning situations to maximum advantage, whilst expending the minimum effort.
Strategic Thinking, As An Outcome...
Most usefully, strategic thinking can be a versatile valuable aid to versatile management and provides a 'bigger picture' that simplifies the most complex of business organizational activities processes, as well as creating the environment to encourage the sharing of possibilities for the future.
Of course, just because you take a bit of time out to look at the future and all it's opportunities, you are not going to make it work out perfectly. Nothing, especially business, is quite that simple.
It's a way forward into the future. - 15275
To make a business progress according to a manager or owner's wishes, there needs to be a conscious effort to build a skillset that includes facilitation, negotiation, creativity, team-building and the ability to work through perceived problems with positivity and good humor.
Strategic thinking itself, as a valuable tool, is a process whereby leaders critically examine and evaluate the identifiable implications of their choices in business and explore the available options before making absolute decisions.
Strategic Thinking - Need To Understand More?
Strategic thinking has its application and use in a very many differing circumstances, from devising strategies or policies for a company, arriving at or ironing out a business decision, to even simply gauging or understanding a situation.
The use of a strategic thinking methods allows reverse engineering of the future, so that pieces are placed in position appropriately, rather than ending up there by chance.
Wherever you are, whatever your organization, you dare not blindly go forward without any thinking about the future. Every day, when you live only on the edge, eventually it will return to haunt you. This way of working is just unsustainable, irrespective of stress it can cause.
Strategic Thinking Tactics - Could It Be Worth It?
The key point about strategic thinking is that it provides a solid and researched framework to guide towards planned outcomes that may be some way into the distance. Some of the major organizations in the world have strategic plans or some 50 years in advance. Now, that requires some thinking ahead!
A key point about doing this work is that it will position you much better than others in your market who have taken the shorter term view.
In fact, such strategic thinking work needs a bunch of people who are able to ignore current logic and short-term measures. In the future there will most likely be significantly different scenarios that could easily change the rules of the way we think right now. The best at this factor out as many of the issues likely to lead to failure. That way there are few surprises at all.
There is only a crystal ball to help you (and we all know the value of that!). There are no certainties any more and the world seems to spin faster and faster every year. And by taking a little time out for yourself on an occasional basis to think of possibilities and their impact on you, there will be great value in it.
Strategic Thinking As Work In Progress
Planning and preparing in advance with a vision or purpose is difficult. It is so much easier to just act and take care of the immediate requirements without thinking or planning too much. And, to be frank, this is as good a recipe for disaster in anything but the very short-term that can be adopted.
Yet if there is the aspiration to improve and grow with operational performance, it is imperative to adopt the benefits of strategic thinking. By simply asking what is required as outcomes from actions, and what might realistically will follow from them in terms of unforeseen consequences and then the potential outcomes of that, a tighter fit may well be accomplished, bringing the thinking closer to reality.
This will allow thinking and planning with an eye to the outcome and encourage approaching every interaction with a view to the desired result. It gives a long term focus and not only enables dealing with short term disappointments, it also helps to identify and make best use of leverage opportunities turning situations to maximum advantage, whilst expending the minimum effort.
Strategic Thinking, As An Outcome...
Most usefully, strategic thinking can be a versatile valuable aid to versatile management and provides a 'bigger picture' that simplifies the most complex of business organizational activities processes, as well as creating the environment to encourage the sharing of possibilities for the future.
Of course, just because you take a bit of time out to look at the future and all it's opportunities, you are not going to make it work out perfectly. Nothing, especially business, is quite that simple.
It's a way forward into the future. - 15275
About the Author:
(c) 2008 Martin P Haworth is the author of Super Successful Manager!, an easy to use, step-by-step weekly development program for managers of ANY capability. You can get a sample lesson for free at http://www.SuperSuccessfulManager.com.
