The Everyday Strategist: How to Embed Strategic Thinking in Your Team
Early in my marketing career, I frequently heard the phrase “everyone in the company is a marketer”. It emphasized the fact that every worker, regardless of position, has a responsibility to effectively represent the company and its brand.
Perhaps the same can be said for strategy. It doesn’t make sense to relegate a firm’s strategy to a designated leader or even to the executive team at its annual retreat. No, strategy is fluid. It’s dynamic. And it’s inclusive, meaning everyone should have a part to play in its planning and execution.
If that can be true for your team, how can you elevate them to be critical thinkers? To have strategy as part of their daily ways of working? Keep reading for five practical ways your employees can think and act strategically.
1. Context: Encourage Big-Picture Thinking
Help them see beyond their specific role. Strategic thinkers and doers succeed by considering the broader context in situations. Our current workplace cultures often emphasize nailing what’s right in front of us, a heads-down grind to get things done. Yet you can extend your team’s view by training them to connect the dots for more of a “systems perspective”. It’s similar to how basketball players are taught to dribble—not by looking at the ball—but by keeping their heads up so they can see the whole court.
2. Time: Teach Them to Play the Long Game
Similarly, teach them the long game. Strategy is not transactional; it’s typically a long journey with lots of detours. What questions can you ask to guide them to consider second and even third-order impacts? What are the ripple effects of the decisions they want to make or the initiatives they propose? Reference the often-used analogy of a chess master thinking 2-3 moves ahead. Great strategic thinkers factor in an extended time horizon for anything important.
3. Curiosity: Make Room for Wonder
Your team members can become effective strategists by increasing their curiosity in problem-solving. Instead of diving in to craft a resolution and moving on, what if they ask probing questions to uncover the real problem, not simply a symptom? Remember, a great solution to the wrong problem is not much help. Ask them to take a minute to wonder, explore, and investigate. Propose some “what if” questions to spark curiosity or some “have you thought about” questions to expand possibilities.
4. Risk: Normalize Calculated Risk-Taking
Be OK with informed risk. Risk is a natural partner of strategy. As team members increase their curiosity around problem-solving, they will seek to make decisions and proactively move toward solutions. That’s great. Encourage them to embrace uncertainty of the journey and the unknown consequences. Of course, that requires you to extend a greater measure of grace, right?
5. Challenge: Model Constructive Dissent
A great strategist rarely accepts things at face value. They look at things from multiple perspectives and peek around the corners often overlooked by others. This is another tip highly dependent on organizational culture, so you likely will have to model for them how to question assumptions, how to respectfully challenge the status quo, or how to offer a dissenting view. Empower open dialogue so that strategy becomes a normal part of team meetings. You will find that your “strategists” soon will craft their own insightful points of view.
Elevating strategic thinking on your team yields numerous benefits, from wiser decisions and collaboration to less re-work and more impactful projects. Add the tips above to equip those around you with the mindset and behaviors to think and act more strategically.
Gary McClure is a senior consultant at Thrivence, a consulting firm specializing in strategy, leader development, organizational performance, and technology. For more than 15 years, Gary has led organizational transformation initiatives and taught leaders how to navigate successful change, including AI. He can be reached at gary.mcclure@thrivence.com. We offer a full suite of planning services, from in-depth discovery and strategy activities to implementation and communications expertise.
