Welcome to the 'Strategic Skills' Series. Each edition will unpack one strategic leadership trait at a time, designed to harness and elevate your inherent talents.
Ever wondered how to be more strategic in your role?
This is something that I'm asked about often in coaching conversations, which promoted me to write about today’s topic: Strategic thinking.
'Being strategic' is one of those illusive traits that everyone wants, without being taught how to develop it. But in reality, strategic thinking and planning simply means grasping the overarching view, anticipating what's on the horizon, and planning your moves.
For this, you need space, time and mental clarity.
Ever wish you could take a breather and strategise?
However, without a clear framework, our much-needed strategic thinking time gets overshadowed by immediate demands, rather than focusing on what is important.
Let's dive into some actionable steps to harness strategic thinking in your leadership journey:
Create the space: Firstly, aim to carve out 1 – 2 hours of strategic space per week. If that seems like an impossible dream now, start with 30 minutes…. something is better than nothing.
The more you plan, prioritise and delegate, the more space you will be able to create over time.
Schedule: How and when you do it will need to work for you. Some do it Monday morning, some Friday afternoon, some half an hour every morning or even a Sunday. Whatever floats your boat, but just try it. Block out your calendar in these times, get away from the emails and guard it with your life. Structure: In the context of existing strategy, vision, purpose, KPI’s and business plans (if available), choose one or two of these prompts to get momentum:
Prioritise: Map out what’s most important and urgent for the week, or month ahead. (Using Eisenhower’s important/urgent matrix). Delegate/delay/delete, or schedule to do accordingly.
Delegate: Use the time to assess and plan to delegate as much as you possibly can. Your time will then shift over time from doing to leading and influencing for impact.
Plan: Map out the next 90 days – just a few key priorities per month. Then working back, what do you need to action this week? Put it on the wall and give yourself the gift of clarity, prioritisation and progress amongst the noise.
Prepare to present: What meetings or presentations do you have coming up that are critical, or could be leveraged with some thought and preparation to impart your message more effectively?
Plan, prepare, practice.
Network: Who should you reach out to, connect with, catch up with? As a first step, brainstorm a list of people, then it’s easy to develop at least one of your relationships per week from there.
Communications: What communications do you need to commence, cascade or create? What can you update your team or organisation about? Are there any important conversations that need to be put into the diary?
Schedule: Schedule in when you’ll prepare, delegate, monitor and review the delegated activities, as well as core communications and actions identified above.
Map progress: This one is so powerful! Note down what you and the team have achieved in the last week. It is so empowering and energising.
Is is helpful? I’d love to know how do you currently/plan to integrate it into your routine?
Feel free to request a topic for future newsletters!
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