Strategic thinking: characteristics and exercises to promote it

Strategic thinking is a concept that began to make a career in the field of marketing. However, it is perfectly applicable to other areas, in addition to the business or work field. This is actually a useful approach in virtually any area.

Strategic thinking is defined as the approach that looks at today with a future perspective.. In other words, one who is capable of anticipating the effect of actions, a long-term vision, creative and oriented towards achieving specific objectives.

As the name itself says, strategic thinking involves a strategy. A coordinated action plan focused on a relevant achievement. Initially, this type of thinking was used in war. Then, in the business world. However, as we have said previously, it can be applied to any type of purposes.

Characteristics of strategic thinking

The first thing to say about strategic thinking is that it is not learned from a manual. Many compare it to walking, swimming or cycling. It is not something theoretical, but rather it is learned and strengthened with practice..

You think strategically when you meet these characteristics:

Know where you want to go. There has to be a clearly defined objective or purpose. Otherwise, any strategy is meaningless.Know where we are. It is necessary to have the ability to define what the current situation is and how distant the goal to be achieved is.Know how to define the path to follow. It is the central point of the strategy. It involves designing how to get to what we propose.Know how to self-evaluate and correct. Strategic thinking requires flexibility to constantly monitor what is being done and be able to redefine course.

To think strategically you need a dose of realism, a capacity for reflection, synthesis and an overview.. Now, these capabilities are not born from nothing, they must be developed through practice.

Three keys to strategic thinking

Many skills influence strategic thinking. However, there are three that are decisive. And they are because they allow us to build the axis of this way of thinking: strategy. These skills are:

Ability to discard predictive models. You cannot adopt a model of action and stubbornly cling to it. The strategy is constantly being renewed. Therefore, you have to have an open mind to direct, constantly redirect and address uncertainty.Ability to ask questions. In strategic thinking, questions are much more important than answers. If you can define the question, you are already more than halfway done.Identify key points. It is necessary to learn to separate the determining from the random. Knowing what the decisive factors are is essential. This allows for more precise monitoring and redirecting actions towards those aspects when necessary.

Strategic thinking is not the same as “strategic planning”. The first is an intellectual ability that is channeled. The second, the application of that skill on a specific aspect or situation.

According to different theories, strategic thinking would be related to abstract-logical thinking. In adolescence one goes from concrete thinking to a more logical-abstract one. This change allows us, for example, to plan and/or predict possible future events through our present behavior.. Thus, strategic thinking is linked to abstract-logical thinking, through which we observe and take into account all the available factors to organize what we want in the way we consider optimal.

Exercises to develop strategic thinking

As Miguel Ángel Corona (2010), from the Iberoamerican University of Puebla, states in his article “Development of strategic thinking in business school”: “Developing strategic thinking requires expanding the horizons of the mind and work on the three subsystems of thought; that is, the processes related to concepts, knowledge and schemes, with the mental skills and abilities to propose strategies and use methods and techniques that, finally, with emotions, motivations and interests, will move the wills..

There are many ways to develop strategic thinking. From playing chess to launching everyday hypotheses and testing them. However, To start you can do some simple exercises. They have proven to be effective in disciplining the mind so that it acquires the ability to strategize.

The most recommended simple exercises are:

Do something totally different. The idea is that you propose to do an activity that you have never done before. It can be something very simple, like changing your daily route to go to work. You must remain very attentive to everything. Then, describe the experience on paper. Write down what you discovered.Play the model. It’s about choosing someone you deeply admire. The mechanics are similar to that of the role-playing game. You take the character and you are inspired by his way of thinking. Then, all day long, you behave as if you were that person. At the end of the day, you describe what you discoveredcrazy questions. Try to ask a question every day about something that is unusual. It should not be a question that seeks information, but rather one that induces analysis. Try to answer it without going to information. Launch hypotheses. Then investigate and verify. For example, why are eyes round?

Strategic thinking is a skill that facilitates the achievement of objectives. Hence it can be applied to practically everything. It helps you think more orderly, but above all, to think in terms of achievement and the long term.

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