When’s the last time you thought strategically about your organization or a project you’re working on? Most of us must admit we have our heads down working through an incredibly busy schedule. There is more work to do than we have time. Who has the energy or focus to think strategically about the big strategic picture of their organization?
In his book Elevate, Rich Horwath discusses the many obstacles to strategic thinking. We know that thinking strategically is important, but few managers do it effectively. There is quite a difference between knowing you should do something and actually doing it.
THE 1,000 FOOT VIEW
To think strategically, we must stop focusing on the details, and instead look at the business as a whole. In the past, I have encouraged business leaders to take a 30,000-foot look at their business. Actually, we need to stay much closer. Horwath encourages the 1000-foot view. Here we can see our systems at work and stay close enough to hear what our employees and clients think.
Compare this to flying in a commercial aircraft versus hovering in a hot air balloon. When you’re hot air ballooning, you can hear the conversations on the ground while seeing all the traffic patterns and landscapes. In order to think strategically, we need to be out of the minute details, but still close enough to the business so we can identify opportunities.
OVERCOME THE CHALLENGES TO STRATEGIC THINKING
We know the importance of thinking strategically, but how do we overcome the obstacles that stand in our way? Here are the four top challenges to strategic thinking and how you can overcome them.
TIME
When asked, “How are you doing?” Most of us say, “Busy!” Staying busy is the norm at work because in today’s society we’re rewarded for doing, not thinking. When we are constantly told to “stay busy”, how can we create time to think?
96 percent of the managers in Horwath’s the study cited time as a critical challenge. To create time for thinking, you need to take control of your schedule. Reduce the number of meetings you attend, shorten and focus the meetings you control, and delegate tasks to others. This can carve out 2-3 hours each week to think and work strategically.
Now that you’ve created this time, use it. If we are not personal owners of the time we created, we will waste the opportunity.
COMMITMENT
Commitment is synonymous with buy-in. 72 percent of managers felt that a lack of commitment from others on their team held them back. It’s not enough to develop strategic ideas. Ideas are great, but we also need execution; we need support, energy, and passion to follow through with a team and business.
Invest your time in working with a team to elevate the thinking of the group. Encourage creativity by sharing your ideas unfiltered. Create lively discussion. Ask searching questions. Formulate a strategic plan together and create team accountability to follow through. Inspire careful forward thinking by building trust and getting to know each member of your team personally.
Once you’ve build trust and engagement in your team, you’ll see commitment and follow-through on initiatives you’ve developed together.
PRIORITIES
It’s easy to criticize others’ priorities. Horwath found that both creating and agreeing with others’ priorities is challenging to 60 percent of managers. Self-aware leaders examine their own priorities. It’s important to do this because our priorities inform how we invest our time. Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix helps us evaluate our priorities. In his timeless two-axis model shown below, he encourages us to examine our use of time.
Strategic thinking and planning falls in the Important and Not Urgent quadrant. Unfortunately, this is a much-neglected area of our lives. Because we are so focused on staying busy, Urgent items always get done. However, now that you know strategic thinking is important AND you’ve created time in your calendar for it, you can start to check off some items in the Important and Non Urgent quadrant. Ironically, stating and evaluating our priorities falls into the same Important and Non Urgent quadrant, which means it too is always at the bottom of our to-do list.
STATUS QUO
We all complain about the status quo around us. 56 percent of managers in the study stated this as a challenge. You may have heard this stated as, “But we’ve always done it this way.” There is a status quo bias in all of us; it’s is part of our human nature to resist change and keep things as they are. This explains why we enjoy dreaming of change and even suggesting it to others while the gap between our own knowing and doing widens.
The best way to challenge the status quo is to make and keep promises. If put myself and my big ideas “out there” in public and with my team, I am much more likely to follow through with a big and challenging project. I’ve found the more I commit to others, the more I follow through and the more I grow.
MAKE THE TIME AND COMMIT
Take control of your schedule to elevate your thinking each week and avoid the busyness syndrome. Rise to the challenge of thinking strategically and critically by looking at your processes, systems, and direction. Spend time with your employees. Know them and let them know you. Engage your clients, not to sell, but to understand their business and concerns. Once you have created the time to build strong relationships with your teams and customers, your solutions get more effective, your organization gets stronger, and your clients are happier. We all could use some weekly elevation.
