Thinking Strategically

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“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – Sun Tzu

Strategic thinking is often described as something instinctual or unteachable. That’s not true. You can learn to think differently, and you can start with the knowledge you already have. There are questions you can ask yourself and your team to practice strategic thinking skills:

Observation – What are the hard facts of this opportunity?
Analysis – How do the hard facts limit or expand our choices?
Inference – How is this project like other projects we’ve done in the past?
Communication – What is everyone else thinking?
Problem Solving – Where can we go from here?

A thoughtful strategic plan has a much bigger impact than just a bright idea. When thinking strategically comes easy to someone, it can look like a superpower. Strategic thinking means identifying all the boxes that will need to be completed in order to achieve a goal – and that’s not supernatural, it’s a skill like any other that takes patience and practice to master.

A critical element to help yourself and your teams practice critical thinking is documentation and document retention! You have to be able to look back at what you’ve done so you can learn from others’ experiences, help best practices become second nature, and make sure great ideas are remembered.

Resources from the Enterprise

From the Department of Administration
- Guide: Collaborative Process Design
From Enterprise Talent Development
- Enterprise Talent Development (ETD) offers Skills Development Courses on this topic. Review upcoming scheduled courses on the ETD website.
- Enroll in Strategic Effectiveness for Aspiring Leaders (SEAL)

Relevant Resources

Articles
- Critical Thinking for Managers: A Manifesto
  Critical thinking is a means of thinking that aids with evaluating and analyzing information, and this information is important for strategic thinking. While this focuses on building critical thinking within manager, it is applicable to all.
- 10 Top Critical Thinking Skills (And How to Improve Them)
  Breaks down the skills that contribute to effective critical thinking, defines them, and provides practical ways and tips of improving their proficiency.
- 4 Ways to Develop Your Strategic Thinking Skills
  Harvard Business School Online identifies what skills contribute to strategic thinking, and provides practical means of developing these skills.
LinkedIn Learning Course: Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset
Provides information on how to access the reliability and validity of information that is presented to be able to make better decisions. It is not uncommon to get stuck in overthinking when developing the critical thinking skills, and provides way to avoid this while maintaining mental agility.
Workshop: Design Mindset Methods