You know the type—heck, you may be him or her yourself. You know, the person who’s always “strategizing.” Gearing up for a new product launch? It’s time to be strategic. Developing a new workplace protocol? Strategy: engaged. Deciding between carryout or dine-in? Time to take out the strategy machine. And there’s thinking that falls into the misinformation of strategy myths.
I jest, but research consistently confirms that an ability to think strategically is a highly desirable trait in leaders—arguably the highest.
In a massive study of 60,000 global managers and executives, the Management Research Group found that “a strategic approach to leadership was, on average, 10 times more important to the perception of effectiveness than other behaviors studied.
“It was twice as important as communication (the second most important behavior) and almost 50 times more important than hands-on tactical behaviors.”
Be that as it may, it’s all too common for terms like “strategic thinking” to get thrown around the office with little thought given to the actual definition. Like any other buzzword, it’s come to mean so many things to so many people. Over time, any popular term will inevitably become slippery. But few have slipped quite as much as “strategic thinking.”
While there are probably an infinite number of strategy myths and misconceptions floating around, there are six in particular that I’ve encountered time and time again.
These misunderstandings confuse well-meaning leaders who want to elevate their focus and spend their time working on genuinely important things. So, in an effort to set the record straight, here’s a breakdown of each.
Strategy Myth # 1: Strategic thinking is all about “big ideas.”
Many people assume that “strategic thinking” means sitting around thinking up breakthrough ideas or pondering the future in an abstract way.
This usually leads to people trying to sound “strategic” by using the latest management jargon or quoting the latest management gurus. People assume that watching popular TED talks or reading prestigious management journals will make them sound in the know—at least enough to impress others with strategic-sounding conversation.
Strategic thinking does require having ideas. But those ideas have to be grounded in your company’s context, and they have to be relevant to things your company is trying to do.
Knowing the most popular management frameworks and models doesn’t make you more strategic—knowing how they apply to your company, and how they can advance your goals, does. It’s not about thinking up or quoting big ideas. It is about forming or knowing how good ideas are specifically relevant to your company.
Strategy Myth #2: Being “more strategic” means being more productive.
It can be tempting to believe that if you’re strategic, you’ll naturally get more done. So to sustain the myth of strategy, many leaders will generate lots of initiatives and projects, send lots of emails, work long hours, and keep as many plates spinning in the air as possible.
But hyper-productivity not only isn’t being strategic, it’s often a symptom that someone is actually doing the opposite.
Those who are truly strategic actually do fewer tasks, but do more of the right ones. They’re able to say no to opportunities in order to sustain their focus on things they have committed to. Thinking you can do it all is yet another strategy misconception that’s, well, rather unproductive.
Quote
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
– Michael Porter
Strategy Myth #3: Strategic thinking is all about financial or market metrics.
For many leaders, especially those with MBAs, being strategic means talking in terms of market share, return on invested capital, profit margins, sales revenue, and other common business metrics.
I’m always astounded when I ask leaders to break down their company’s financial performance and show me how they actually make their money; it’s amazing how many just don’t know. They may know what the metrics themselves mean, but they have no idea if their company even tracks them, or how they apply.
Having financial and business acumen is better than not having them, but it doesn’t make you strategic. What does make you strategic is knowing the metrics your company tracks and how those metrics help your company make important decisions about priorities and investments.
Do you know how your company calculates profits? Do you know what it costs your company to produce the product or service you sell? Do you know how much it costs to acquire a new customer or client?
You will be far more strategically valuable to your company if you understand what measures indicate if you are doing well or doing poorly, and how to use those metrics to make critical decisions.
Strategy Myth #4: Strategic thinking means you have smart answers.
If you’re spending time thinking big thoughts, it stands to reason you’ll have the smartest answers to any problems that come your way, right? Sorry, that’s another misconception. Nothing could be further from the truth.Many leaders confuse being strategic with sounding confident, being declarative with your ideas, and using big words to support those ideas. This is all smoke and mirrors, though, and savvy employees can see right through it.
In reality, the most strategic leaders are the ones who ask the best questions. They are curious about things and wonder what ideas haven’t been considered.
They want to know what’s behind any assumptions being made. And most importantly, strategic leaders aren’t afraid to admit when they don’t know something. They never try to hide their lack of knowledge behind smart-sounding jargon in order to convince others they’re “strategic.”
Call-out/Tip
Be wary of strategic thinking “templates”: one-size-fits-all strategic approaches that are designed to have mass appeal. Any method coined in a book or from a popular YouTube video probably falls under this label. True strategic thinking requires, well, thinking, not outsourcing. Only you and your team can candidly assess your unique organizational needs and goals.
Once those are on hand, you’ll be ready to think strategically (while taking care to avoid the six strategic thinking misconceptions described here!).
Strategy Myth #5: Being strategic means you decide what’s important.
It’s natural to associate the concept of strategic thinking with the most important things in your organization. But if you were to ask any of your colleagues to tell you which projects they’re working on aren’t important, you won’t get much of a response.
Being strategic doesn’t mean determining the relative importance of things, but it does mean setting a limited number of priorities and keeping them.
Rather than labeling everything as important relative to “less” or “more” important things, strategic leaders don’t shy away from hard tradeoffs. They are able to set aside opportunities, say no to enticing ideas, or even shut down projects, when the truly strategic priorities are at risk of not getting done.
To fight against one of the myths of strategic thinking, being strategic means focusing the organization on getting the priority work finished. All of which is to say: where there’s a strategic thinking myth, a priority misconception often isn’t far behind.
Strategy Myth #6: Being strategic is only required for those at the top.
It’s easy to assume that strategic work is for the senior most leaders of an organization while the day-to-day activities should be left to everyone else. Here again, the underlying assumption is that those lower in the organization aren’t working on strategic activities. Sure, in most organizations senior leaders are the ones looking furthest out into the future.
But being in the middle or on the frontlines does not mean that what someone’s working on isn’t strategic, or that they don’t have to be strategic about how you approach it. Every person in a company should ideally have some understanding of how their specific role connects to the company’s strategic priorities.
This misconception about strategy is especially insidious since it implies to middle managers and frontline workers that they can make things up as they go along.
The work of forming strategic priorities and shaping the future may loosely correlate to a company’s hierarchy, but everyone makes some contribution toward a company’s success—or its failure. It’s essential, then, that they know what that contribution ought to be.
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