Strategic Thinking

You've been at your job for almost a year, and the annual strategic plan meeting is coming up. It’s your first time attending, so you ask around and hear varied opinions—some find these meetings essential, others pointless. Approaching the week with uncertainty but an open mind, you’re still unsure if this type of planning is truly significant or just a corporate buzzword. You wonder: what does strategic thinking even look like in practice?

Strategic thinking is a proactive process focused on envisioning long-term goals, anticipating potential challenges, and leveraging opportunities through comprehensive analysis.¹ It goes beyond basic planning by synthesizing internal strengths and external trends to create adaptable strategies that evolve as new information emerges. This continuous and integrative approach ensures that organizations remain resilient and prepared to navigate dynamic environments effectively. Nowadays, the competitive reality for any type of organization may suddenly shift overnight—where many changes result in failure. For cases like this, strategic thinking is an approach that makes the anticipation of such changes more manageable. 

Inherent to this type of thinking are the strategic thinking skills necessary to adequately prepare either individuals or companies to face challenges head-on or prepare for future obstacles. We may focus on four main types of strategic thinking skills (although this list is not necessarily exhaustive of what strategic thinking skills may entail):²

• Analytic skills: To develop a strategy that can help achieve a company’s goals, a range of elements may need to be analyzed: market conditions, industry trends, financial performance forecasts, and resources inside the organization. 

An example of analytical skills is conducting desk research on a relevant topic to your industry to identify a pattern and reach a conclusion.

• Communication skills: These are essential for any company where internal and external partners need to effectively communicate—regardless of industry, company size, or any other aspects. This entails establishing a shared vision and making sure that everyone involved is on the same page. 

For instance, nonverbal communication is a crucial skill in any workplace, where paying attention to the facial expressions and body language of coworkers can help enhance the interpretation of dialogue.

• Problem-solving skills: Strategic thinking involves understanding and addressing problems that are expected to arise—or, unfortunately, already have. Perhaps there is some fierce competition that has been growing quickly, financial goals need to be revamped, or productivity has taken a hit. 

Conflict resolution is just one example of a problem-solving skill, such as mediating a disagreement between two coworkers on how to approach the competition your company is facing.

• Planning and management skills: Challenges cannot just be discussed; the integration of planning solutions is a critical step. After implementing the above skills, putting a plan into place with appropriate management techniques is the final touch, which helps leaders at a company provide guidance to their teams and workers to achieve goals. 

A key planning and management skill is time management, where you prioritize more crucial tasks, delegate to others, and put distractions aside.

There are two classic contexts where strategic thinking emerges: business and leadership.² However, this approach is relevant in almost every sector, including (but not limited to) healthcare,³ government,⁴ education,⁵ and your own personal development.⁶

1. Business: A common place we may experience strategic thinking is at the companies we work for. Going into that annual strategic meeting, you and your team might come together to analyze various types of data and devise a strategic intent or strategic narrative to determine a roadmap for a specific time period.² Although annual meetings are popular, different organizations may hold strategic meetings at higher frequencies to review how effective previous strategies have been.
2. Leadership: When it comes to addressing strategy, various leaders, like managers and stakeholders, are heavily involved in the decision-making process. Who the leaders are and how they elect to approach strategy has a significant impact on company results. For instance, a management team may consider which products they want to offer next, who their biggest competition is, and what constraints they have on resources like time, finances, and, of course, the employees themselves. 

In the business world, leadership meetings, and other places where strategic thinking is exemplified, a related concept called strategic planning may also be a popular aspect of corporate strategy.⁷ These two concepts fall under the larger umbrella of strategic management.⁷ Several thinkers in this field see strategic thinking and strategic planning as being closely intertwined while still having clear distinctions. One way to differentiate these strategic management tools may be seeing strategic thinking as a means to prepare for various versions of a company’s future. In contrast, strategic planning focuses on discovering and supporting strategies already developed in the planning phase by implementing them into a business context.⁷

We may conceptualize the differences between these two strategic management processes as follows:⁸