Strategic Thinking

10 Key excerpts on "Strategic Thinking"

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  Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations

  • Linda E. Swayne, W. Jack Duncan, Peter M. Ginter(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Strategic Thinking is an individual intellectual process, a mindset, or method of intellectual analysis that asks people to position themselves as leaders and see the “big picture.” Vision and a sense of the future are inherent parts of strategic think- ing. Strategic thinkers are constantly reinventing the future – creating windows on the world of tomorrow. James Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge have indicated: “All enterprises or projects, big or small, begin in the mind’s eye; they begin with imagination and with the belief that what is merely an image can one day be made real.” 20 Strategic thinkers draw upon the past, understand the present, and envision an even better future. Strategic Thinking requires a mind- set – a way of thinking or intellectual process that accepts change, analyzes the causes and outcomes of change, and attempts to direct an organization’s future to capitalize on the changes. More specifically, Strategic Thinking: acknowledges the reality of change, questions current assumptions and activities, builds on an understanding of systems, envisions possible futures, generates new ideas, and considers the organizational fit with the external environment. • • • • • • THE DIMENSIONS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT CHAPTER 1: THE NATURE OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT 14 Strategic Thinking generates ideas about the future of an organization and ways to make it more relevant – more in tune with the world. Strategic Thinking assesses the changing needs of the organization’s stakeholders and the changing technological, social and demographic, economic, legislative/political, and com- petitive demands of its world.

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  Thinking Strategically

  • Harvard Business Review(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Harvard Business Review Press

    (Publisher)

  Thinking Strategically: The Basics An Overview of Thinking Strategically 3 4 Thinking Strategically Y our boss just told you to “think strategically”—but what does that mean? In the pages that follow, we’ll take a closer look at several key aspects of thinking strategically—what it is, why it’s important, who needs to think strategically, what distin-guishes strategic thinkers, and what are the steps in the Strategic Thinking process. What is Strategic Thinking? In its most basic sense, Strategic Thinking is about analyzing oppor-tunities and problems from a broad perspective and understanding the potential impact your actions might have on others. Strategic thinkers visualize what might or could be, and take a holistic ap-proach to day-to-day issues and challenges. And they make this an ongoing process rather than a onetime event. Like other managers, you routinely encounter complex situa-tions, difficult problems, and challenging decisions. Your job is to deal with these situations as best you can by using the information you have. In an ideal world, you would have access to all the infor-mation you need to navigate through these challenges. Unavoid-ably, however, you have only a limited amount of information to work with. And because you sit in a particular part of your organ-ization, you have a limited view of the forces that lie outside your sphere of influence. An Overview of Thinking Strategically 5 Strategic Thinking helps you overcome these limitations. When you think strategically, you lift your head above your day-to-day work and consider the larger environment in which you’re operat-ing. You ask questions and challenge assumptions about how things work in your company and industry.You gather complex, sometimes ambiguous data and interpret it. And you use the insights gained to make smart choices and select appropriate courses of action.

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  Planning IT

  • David J Silk(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Butterworth-Heinemann

    (Publisher)

  • A few individuals become mentally equipped for this by the time they are 30, but for most it will happen between age 38 and 48. Strategic Thinking The ideas of strategy and tactics originated in a military context. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1982) defines strategy as 'Generalship, the art of war ... management of an army or armies in a campaign, art of so moving or disposing troops or ships or aircraft as to impose upon the enemy the place and time and conditions for fighting preferred by oneself. Professor Bernard Taylor of Henley Management College defines business strategy as 'Searching for the new rules of the game; then finding a way to win'. It is interesting how the language of war is so often adopted now for the context of business. Managers speak of 'locking in customers', 'killing the competition' and 'fighting the battle'. We should be careful that the use of such language does not lead to a narrow-minded or vicious attitude to business. In recent years there has been, if anything, a swing towards acknowledging a wider responsibility; there are other stakeholders than the shareholders, and even the customer. What's different about strategy? The essence of Strategic Thinking (planning the voyage) is shown in Figure 4.5. There are three questions about the enterprise, shown at the top of the figure. The order of asking them is important: 1 Where are we now? We must take stock of the current business situation. This is often done with a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. Strengths and weaknesses are mainly internal, and about present reality. Opportunities and threats are mainly external, and about the future prospect. 2 Where do we want to be? The answer to this question requires an act of lateral or intuitive thinking, to create a vision of where we want the How to think strategically 49 1. Where are we now? 2.

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  Political and Civic Leadership

  A Reference Handbook

  • Richard A. Couto(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  If this connection is not made or discipline developed, then Strategic Thinking will not have the rigor and coherence that it needs to be effective and credible. Strategic plans often ring hollow precisely because there is no linkage between the annual budget and the strategies and policies of government. Problems are kicked down the road for other leadership and generations to address, and by then the issue becomes a crisis and its solution is ever more complicated and painful. Under the right circum-stances, powerful forms of Strategic Thinking are tied to the generation and disciplined use of resources, and strategic leadership is able to make persuasive appeals to con-stituencies to increase the flow of funding, or to take the steps required to cut expenses. In many contexts, this comes back to the ability of the strategy to inspire private contributions, or to persuade voters that tax increases are necessary to achieve worthy ends. Summary We have learned that Strategic Thinking is an applied and integrative discipline of inquiry and decision making. It draws on a variety of insights, processes, and methods to create an integrated understanding of an institution’s iden-tity, position, vision, and priorities. Strategic Thinking is equally at home in the poetic telling of stories of identity and in the rigorous analysis of quantified indicators that define a strategic position. In thinking in these connected ways, Strategic Thinking leaders also focus on how insights 105. Strategic Thinking – • – 943 can be translated into a purposeful and practical set of decisions and actions. Even when leaders may not be aware of Strategic Thinking as a competency of leadership, Strategic Thinking clearly contributes central aspects of an interactive process of leadership.

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  Making Strategic Leaders

  • N. Laljani(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  30 3 Strategic Leader Capability: A Conceptual Framework Thinking and acting strategically A key stance adopted in this study is that strategic leader capability consists of both Strategic Thinking, and acting strategically. Strategic Thinking has variously been defined as identifying different ways for people to attain their organizational objectives and determin- ing what actions are needed to get them in the position they want to be in (Stumpf and Mullen, 1991), a method for finding a vision and obtaining perpetual invigoration for that vision (Pellegrino and Carbo, 2001), the prelude to designing an organization’s future (Zabriskie and Huellmantel, 1991), a combination of analytical thinking and mental elasticity used to gain competitive advantage (Ohmae, 1982), or the thought mechanism that can be used to generate strategic options (Bandarowski, 1985). According to O’Shannassy (2002: 55) Strategic Thinking has also been characterized as being made up of “a clear mental picture of the com- plete system of value creation”, identifying problems, “hypotheses or propositions for investigation with an understanding of the wider busi- ness context”, using both intuition and analysis, “an intuitive under- standing of the future direction of the organization, a clear statement of the organization’s strategic intent”, as well as a consideration of the past, present, and future of the organization, i.e. its history, ethos, cultural legacy etc. The variation in these definitions illustrates the ambiguous and unstructured nature of Strategic Thinking. There is no single formula, and hence managers need to develop flexibility in their problem- solving style. Wilson (1998: 511) argues that “innovative strategies do not emerge from sterile analysis and number-crunching; they come from new insights and intuitive hunches.

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  How to Think Strategically

  Upskilling for Impact and Powerful Strategy

  • Greg Githens(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Business Expert Press

    (Publisher)

  But Strategic Thinking is important, too. The environment external to the organization is changing. Business are operating models and must change, or the organization risks irrelevance.

  Your important personal development task is to carve out time for the practice of Strategic Thinking. As you gain fluency with both concepts, you’ll become a more balanced and mature contributor to your organization.

  If culture is the shared learning of people, then a Strategic Thinking culture will emerge proportional to the increase in numbers of competent individual strategic thinkers.

  Shifting Mental Energy to Strategic Thinking

  Given the sophistication of operations, there is—and will be—a continuing emergence of urgent operational issues. For most people, it is natural to allow those issues to consume their mental energy.

  Operational thinking and Strategic Thinking need not be mutually exclusive. However, given how operational thinking is engrained in the culture, the task for most people is to create some mental space for Strategic Thinking. Go to your daily planner and schedule some dedicated time for Strategic Thinking.

  Managing one’s attention is a fundamental need in developing one’s Strategic Thinking. A manager who claims that “they are too busy to think strategically” might be really saying that “strategy is not a priority at this moment.”

  A day is the same length for highly accomplished people, serene people, and stressed-out people. As the cliché goes, life isn’t about how much time you have, it’s about what you do with the time that you do have.

  Operational thinking is familiar and conventional. Its landmarks are familiar and contrast with the Strategic Thinking landmarks.

  In the next chapter, I begin with the familiar concept of formally initiating a project (the charter) and explore the things that happen before a strategy is articulated. I continue to explain Strategic Thinking as the practice of sensing weak signals, making sense of those signals, articulating a core challenge, developing a logic for strategy, and then programing that strategy with structured actions and implementation.

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  Demystifying Strategic Thinking

  Lessons from Leading CEOs

  • Tony Grundy(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Kogan Page

    (Publisher)

  01 Why Strategic Thinking really matters Introduction Why is the future important? Because we will spend the rest of our lives in it. (ANON) ‘Strategic Thinking’ is often talked about as a sexy management process, but it is not so often defined and even less frequently explored. Similar in many ways to ideas such as ‘innovative thinking’, ‘leadership’, or ‘transformational change’, it is more often than not unclear and ambiguous what it is actually about. Even more of a mystery is what it entails and when one should do it, and on what topics. Googling ‘Strategic Thinking’ brings up a lot of more general material on strategic management, but this tends to be thick with concepts and theory, but thin on cognitive processes. Essentially, therefore, to understand Strategic Thinking one needs to have some understanding of the practical aspects of psychology. This is my 19th text on management (20 th, counting my sole one on something rather different). These writings have evolved over 20 years and are a reflection on theory, research, experiences and insights and are very much concerned with practicality. This book is essentially about three things: Strategic Thinking, demystifying its nature, and practicality, and is a follow-on from my previous one, Demystifying Strategy (Grundy, 2012) which combined different perspectives on strategy with a very particular framework of thinking processes and tools, case studies and many practical do-it-yourself exercises. Demystifying Strategy set out to shed a practical ‘I can do it myself’ perspective on what in many texts is a somewhat exotic and esoteric subject. The result of the more abstract treatment is that strategy is positioned in managers’ minds as being remote from everyday experience. In that earlier volume, the focus on demystifying was explicit and ruthless (even at the risk of upsetting colleagues at business schools)

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  Strategic Planning

  A Practical Guide to Strategy Formulation and Execution

  • B. Keith Simerson(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Strategic Thinking is an integral part—and at times the hardest part—of strategic planning. Likewise, subsequent execution of the strategies formulated during the strategic planning process is an integral part—and at times the hardest part—of strategic management. Experience and conversations with countless execu- tives and graduate students reinforce to me that strategic management not only involves deciding on the desired position of an organization in the business environment, but also includes the acquisition of the right capabilities, the allocation of resources, the establishment of performance objectives and the monitoring of metrics, and the constant assessment, feedback, and actions con- tributing to continuous improvement that make that position a reality. As you proceed with your strategic planning effort, consider the creation of the strategic plan to be the beginning rather than the end of your effort; only through successful execution marked by constant and steady progress, short-term accomplishment of your organization’ s mission, and the ultimate attainment of your organi- zation’s vision will your strategic planning effort be complete and successful. Here, I use the terms “complete” and “successful” with some reservation: your strategic planning effort will never be “complete” in that you will factor the results of your first effort and time period into your next strategic planning cycle, and during the initial effort and time period and throughout subsequent cycles, 28 Strategic Planning you will strive to continuously improve your strategic planning process as well as your strategy formulation and execution.

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  Uncertainty in Entrepreneurial Decision Making

  The Competitive Advantages of Strategic Creativity

  • Panagiotis E. Petrakis, D. Konstantakopoulou(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The continuous change that occurs in business shrinks the time frame in which predictions are useful. Effective scenario planning is thus required to develop powerful strategies that can be devel- oped and implemented by all hierarchical structures within an enterprise. Scenario thinking is a procedure that generates scenarios. Scenarios are subsequently used to determine strategy. Sce- nario thinking is basically a way of thinking and organizing the mind to deal with complex situations and determine how to manage the future to be better prepared for unexpected events. The sequence of scenario thinking is as follows: 1. The first step is to identify forces of change and inevitable trends (see Chapter 2). The combination of these forces under different conditions creates a set of different stories about how the future will develop. 2. Once the future has been created, the organization should identify the conditions under which it will have to operate so that it can adapt efficiently to those new conditions. Developing this perspective is not easy since new issues or strategic concerns arise and old issues are reframed (Scearce and Fulton 2004). The use of scenario thinking to handle uncertainty is not a simple matter of recording stories. In contrast, strategic planning requires that managers have a deeper understand- ing of the world in which they act. This requires managers to develop formal and informal learning skills and critical thinking to understand changes in the environment. A key feature of scenario thinking is the long-term horizon for implementation, which helps individuals to frame their thinking and take action. Managers can thus enhance the H i g h U n c e rta i n t y a n d L ow N o m i n a l R e t u r n s 169 effectiveness of their strategic decisions since they are based on a long-term horizon.

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  Strategic Thinking in Tactical Times

  • J. DiVanna, F. Austin, J. DiVanna, F. Austin(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  22 The second half of the equa- tion is a method which can be accomplished by adopting an approach to global strategy such as balancing the economies of global standardi- zation versus local desires for customization, forming strategic partner- ship, developing or linking to an international brand, creating industry collaborations or joint ventures and participation in a network of value to name just a few. To achieve this, an organization must strive to create a common understanding of this global context across the organization. These global views are most effectively communicated by the use of busi- ness scenarios, which describe a range of business options based on a specific set of business conditions. It is important to note that scenarios are not predictions of the future nor are they forecasts of business activ- ities, they are possibilities of a business condition that is different than the current business; the scenario may occur at any time in the near or distant future. 23 In order to build a global view or a scenario of a future state it is imperative that organizations develop skills in sensing market conditions and identify trends that will influence the description of future operating states which is the subject of the next section. 36 Strategic Thinking in Tactical Times Sensing the market, competitors, customers and opportunities Axiom: Market trends shape corporate objectives while customer behaviour shapes organizational goals and business process output. Competing in the ever-altering global economy, corporations regardless of industry must be able to sense changes in their customer’s behaviour, demand and preferences. To understand the diversity of customer’s wants, needs and desires, a company must see their products and serv- ices through the eyes of the customer which Day calls market sensing.

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