Spark 10 – How to think more strategically: Getting Past Yourself: Example

Getting past your own limitations in strategic thinking involves a series of deliberate steps:

1. Develop self-awareness: Begin by identifying your own biases and limitations, especially in regard to the topic you want to think strategically about. Reflect on past decisions and consider feedback from diverse sources to understand your habitual patterns and blind spots.
2. Get out of your echo chamber: Actively engage with people from different backgrounds or disciplines on both the topic and your initial thinking. This can involve consulting with team members who bring unique viewpoints or seeking insights from external stakeholders and experts.
3. Swallow the feedback: Your thinking alone is probably not always enough. Push yourself to openly take on feedback. View criticism as opportunities to develop your thinking rather than insurmountable obstacles. Emphasise the value of learning over the fear of being seen to be wrong.
4. Encourage open feedback: share the feedback you have received to create an environment where constructive criticism is welcomed and valued.
5. Experimentation: Embark on trial and error using your thinking and the feedback to develop your strategic approaches.
6. Surrender to collaborative problem-solving: Engage in, and even step back and watch, brainstorming sessions and collaborative workshops on your thinking. Encourage team members to contribute ideas and solutions, fostering a culture of collaborative intelligence.
7. Reflect and adjust: Regularly review your strategies and approaches. Reflect on what’s working and what’s not, and be prepared to pivot or adjust your plans based on these insights.

By following these steps, you can effectively move beyond personal limitations, leveraging a more comprehensive and diverse approach to strategic thinking. This not only broadens your perspective, but also enhances the overall quality and effectiveness of your strategic decisions.

How to think more strategically: practical action

Let’s get practical now. What techniques can you use to implement this concept in your thinking?

• Cognitive reframing: This involves changing the way you view a situation to alter its emotional impact and your response to it. If you consistently view certain strategic challenges with trepidation due to past failures, cognitive reframing can help shift your perspective to see them as learning opportunities. Regularly challenge yourself: ‘Is there another way to interpret this situation?’

• Mindfulness and meditation: These practices ground you in the present moment, helping to clear the clutter of past experiences or future anxieties. By practising mindfulness, you enhance your awareness of your immediate reactions and inherent biases. Even a daily ten-minute meditation practice can offer clarity, especially before making strategic decisions.

• Counterfactual thinking: This involves imagining alternative outcomes to events that have already occurred. For instance, if a past strategic initiative failed, instead of just focusing on what went wrong, think about the scenarios where it could have succeeded. What would have changed? This tool broadens your horizon, making you consider alternatives you might otherwise overlook.

• Descriptive feedback sessions: Instead of just seeking feedback, structure sessions where peers or mentors provide descriptive feedback. Rather than stating what was good or bad, they describe your actions and their observed outcomes. This offers a clearer mirror to your behaviours, aiding in self-awareness and identifying where personal biases might be influencing decisions.

• Socratic questioning: Named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, this method involves asking a series of open-ended questions to stimulate critical thinking. When faced with a strategic challenge, instead of jumping to solutions, pose a series of ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what if’ questions. This introspective enquiry can unearth biases and provide a more objective viewpoint. This is my personal favourite … give it a try and be totally open to the answers others give you.

Applying these tools requires consistent practice. But, as I’ve observed across numerous boardrooms and strategy sessions, the benefits they bring in terms of clarity, objectivity and innovative thinking are profound.

The landscape of strategy, especially in sectors like the for-purpose domain, is ever-evolving. The ability to continually refine one’s thinking, breaking free from personal shackles, remains one of the most invaluable assets a strategist can possess.