For an extended period, when I came across the term “strategic thinking”, I didn’t pay too much attention to the wording. I stored it in the same area in my mind, together with the term “strategy”. The last year I have been trying to understand better and develop my skills and capabilities of the new-era worker, and strategic thinking is on this essential list. Discussing the matter with my husband, I realized the difference: These two terms are inter-connected but mean different things. If strategy deals with the way to victory, strategic thinking deals with the ability to view and understand the big picture of the present, being able to find, create and visualize possible futures, choosing one of these futures, and then, yes- pathing the way to that future.
Today, at our KMGN course KM advanced methodologies, Vadim Shiryaev led us through this fascinated session on strategic thinking. He offered a ladder enabling us to climb up and develop our strategic thinking skills and capabilities. First, we must feel the essence of strategic thinking; we place strategic thinking among other thinking systems (see figure). We learn to know different models of strategic thinking and can adopt one of them, a combination, or even develop our own model. The journey continues and becomes more challenging: we must shift our mindset to implement successfully.
Then we iteratively improve skills, experience, and mindset. We practice, improve and furnish our capability to be strategic thinkers.
Successful strategic thinking goes through tracking new trends, reflecting, and challenging, deepening our models and implementation.
And… to succeed as a strategic thinker, we are encouraged to inspire and mentor at least one more person, so he or she develops to be a strategic thinker.
But my main takeaway is as to the last stage: The journey to success requires us to join two forces together: strategic thinking and leadership. The first helps us set the right path, again and again; the second to implement. Hurray!
This post was initially published in LinkedIn
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