Great Strategic Thinking -- Ten Essentials

Great Strategic Thinking -- Ten Essentials
By J. Glenn Ebersole

Strategic thinking is essential to improving your business performance. And in order to raise the bar of performance in your business from where you are now to where you want to be will require a level of strategic thinking that is in perfect harmony with our vision for the business. Strategic thinking will create a structured and progressive path forward to your vision. There are ten essential requirements to become a great strategic thinker. Those ten include:

Essential Element #1: You must have a vision. And you must be great at thinking with a strategic purpose and creating a visioning process. Great strategic thinkers are visionaries.

Essential Element #2: You must learn from experience and commit to being a lifelong learner. You must use your experiences to think better on strategic issues. Great strategic thinkers strive for continuous improvement in all they do.

Essential Element #3: You must learn to use your time efficiently and effectively. Great strategic thinkers place a high value on time and are masters of strategic time management.

Essential Element #4: You must have an extremely high level of awareness of what is happening around you and be open to absorbing all that you can. In any business, there are clues, often subtle, both internal and external to help guide future direction and to identify opportunities. Great strategic thinkers take all of this in and then they set aside time to think about all the experience and information to guide them in the planning and working on the issues, challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Essential Element #5: You must be patient. It is so important to remember that strategic thinking is about the longer-term future, rather than about today, tomorrow or next week.

Essential Element #6: You must have clearly defined and focused milestones and goals. Ad these must be subject to frequent review to ensure your thinking is validated. Great strategic thinkers have an innate ability to identify the potential twists and turns and "potholes or landmines" that could destroy the possibility of reaching the desired milestones.

Essential Element #7: You must be open-minded. Great strategic thinkers do not bind themselves by constantly judging their thinking as they think up ideas. They keep open minds and test the detail later.

Essential Element #8: You must be realistic in creating your ideas and be honest about what is achievable in the longer term. This will facilitate and ensure a higher probability of delivering success. The great strategic thinker will "under-promise" and "over-deliver."

Essential Element #9: You must reserve and set aside time for your self. In highly competitive and intense business dealings, it is important to take time out. This could be a retreat, or a day away to a creative relaxing place to do some strategic thinking without undue distractions. Great strategic thinkers set aside time to "think!"

Essential Element #10: You must seek the advice and perspective of others. This may take the form of bouncing ideas off a team of people; participating in a peer advisory group; or working with a strategic thinking business coach to achieve that needed advice and other perspective.

If you can acquire the above top ten essential elements, then you will become a great strategic thinker.

© Copyright 2007 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI -- Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

Glenn Ebersole is a Consultant with Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.
He can be reached by email at

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