(upbeat music)
- We spend a lot of our lives being told what to do.
You're not going to do very well in grade school
if you're constantly questioning the teacher and asking,
"Why are we doing it this way?
Wouldn't it be easier to do it this other way?"
So it can be hard to rewire ourselves
once we graduate and enter the work world.
In fact, for quite a while, it doesn't even seem necessary.
What you're praised for and promoted for
in the early days is being able to master tasks quickly
and execute what you're told to do.
Write that report according to the standard format, check.
Design that PowerPoint, process that customer claim,
get that mailing out the door, check, check, check.
But your success and doing what you're told
is actually misleading.
It's great in the early days.
But if you keep doing it,
your career is going to stagnate, stall,
and eventually decline.
As the famed executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith says,
"What got you here won't get you there."
What's useful in the early part of your career
and absolutely mandatory later on
is the ability to embrace strategic thinking.
It's mandatory for leaders
and a skill you have to cultivate.
So how do you do it?
First of all, it's important to be clear.
It's not a one-time activity
where you create a strategy and follow it forever.
Because conditions change,
your strategy needs to change with it.
And that means strategic thinking,
re-evaluating new information and adapting accordingly,
needs to become an ongoing way of life.
To cultivate the strategic mindset,
think about how you can leverage the following activities.
First is questioning assumptions.
Why do we do it that way?
It's a question every five-year-old asks
a hundred times a day,
which, let's be honest, is incredibly annoying.
But when we stop asking those questions,
most people go to the opposite extreme.
They hardly question anything at all.
If you can interrogate habits and practices
in a targeted way,
you can often uncover new ideas and efficiencies
that others simply have never thought about.
Why are we filling out two forms?
Couldn't they actually be combined?
Wouldn't orientation be more efficient
if the second half took place in a field office?
Whatever it is, sometimes asking targeted questions
can unlock great potential.
Next is observing.
So much of modern corporate life is about doing,
about moving faster, quicker, making more things happen.
Of course, there's a place for that.
But that bias means we're also missing opportunities
on the other end.
If we spend all our time doing,
it means we're not really in a position
to observe others whom we can learn from or ourselves,
which means we can't properly refine what we're doing.
Even more critically,
we're not observing the big picture, the macro trends
and the way the pieces of organizational life fit together.
Seeing that, seeing what others aren't even looking at
often can give you unique insights about where and how
you and your company can gain a strategic advantage.
Finally, there's reflecting.
From my book, "Stand out",
I interviewed David Allen, the productivity guru
and the author of "Getting Things Done".
He told me something interesting.
To have a breakthrough idea, it doesn't take time.
It takes space.
What he meant was that a sparkling insight
can happen in an instant.
We've all experienced that sometimes.
But it happens too rarely
because we're too busy and too preoccupied to let it happen.
We have to clear the decks mentally.
And that means learning to be present and reflect
on what we've experienced.
Kick around new ideas and sit with our thoughts.
That's how creativity happens.
Questioning assumptions, observing, and reflecting
are how we can begin to adopt the mindset
of strategic thinking.
(upbeat music)