This month’s tips come from Charlie Goretsky, one of the newest members of the CCI team. Given that strategic thinking, planning, and measuring progress on strategic goals are areas within the scope of his expertise, we asked him to write about just that.
Great leaders think broadly, in an inter-connected manner, and into the future. They anticipate trends, understand their customer’s needs and competitor’s strengths, and have an awareness of global trends that may impact the ability to achieve their vision. Strategic thinking is essential for success in leadership positions, and can be developed. The key lies in understanding the world around you, both inside and outside your organization, with a conscious effort to collect, analyze and apply knowledge to both your strategies and daily work. To develop and hone your strategic thinking:
Broaden your perspective beyond your current function or role in the organization. This requires ongoing consideration of potentially interrelated factors by staying abreast of the strategies employed and the challenges faced by your peers in other parts of the company. This is done in through building relationships and communications with the leaders of other functions, and by scanning their reports and presentations for issues that impact them and potentially yours. How might the CFO’s stated concerns about capital spending levels impact your strategy to increase investments in necessary technology or facilities upgrades? How does a lowered sales forecast for the next two quarters impact your customer service strategies? Understanding how other functions interconnect can lead to improved decision making for the overall organization.
Know your marketplace and competitors. What are customers buying in your segment of the economy? How are they using the products and services provided by you and your competitors? With whom are you in direct competition, and how do their products compare with your own? Not the sole domain of the marketing or product development teams, all leaders need to be aware so they can improve service delivery, product quality, and internal resource allocation. This is also crucial information to be used when recruiting top talent. Success is driven by understanding your employment offering relative to peer companies and how to target your recruiting efforts to both bolster capability shortcomings and assess cultural matches with potential recruits from competitors.
Anticipate future trends, changes and consequences. This drives quality executive thinking and action. Keeping abreast of technological, political, regulatory, economic, social, and workplace trends arms leaders with the ability to prepare for and respond to changes well in advance, thus leveraging opportunities and avoiding downturns. Scanning news clipping services, newspapers, magazines, blogs, business and trade publications, attending professional meetings and networking will all keep you informed about the current and future business environment.
Focus on possibilities. This is the most challenging, in as much as it requires both creativity and a positive outlook, which can be difficult when you are facing serious and multiple challenges to your business outlook. While some people certainly come by this naturally, all leaders need to scan the environment for clues and cues to how operations can be improved or the future re-imagined. An excellent vehicle to both communicate your thinking and gain different perspectives and ideas is an annual or quarterly brainstorming meeting with your team to discuss what could enhance or accelerate the achievement of your organizational vision. Time away from the office to collect and crystallize your thinking can reinvigorate your focus on possibilities.
Practice integrative thinking and action. Take disparate concepts and ideas from a variety of venues and disciplines and bring them together for unique solutions to old issues and challenges. Look outside of the traditional solution sets for answers. Integrating all that you learn from the previously mentioned actions and bringing them back to your own organization creates informs great tactical decision-making and strategic direction.
Charles is a former executive of Reed Business Information and a good colleague. We had the opportunity to work together in the late 90's and colloborated on many human resources issues and topics. He is a consultant for CCI in California.
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