The Strategic Mindset: Beyond Linear Thinking
How to Leverage Business Strategies in Your Organisation?
What is your calling towards strategy?
We facilitate business strategy planning workshops because we have been doing it for years and genuinely enjoy the practice. Over time, our aptitude for strategic thinking has been recognised, though I wasn't aware of this until these last few years.
Thinking strategically has become a practice that was honed by implementing it in ARC and as a part of the consulting work we do with clients.
What draws me to strategy are few things:
The process of forward-thinking
Understanding the constants and variables
Identifying the levers that create maximum impact and
Discovering moves that have the ability to turn tables in difficult situations.
Strategic thinking transcends linear approaches.
What does strategy look like in action?
When an organisation struggles with sales, a linear solution might simply be to hire more salespeople. However, a true strategic approach can be something very different—perhaps developing a new product or finding a lever that creates exponential impact.
What's fascinating about strategic actions is that they often don't have a direct causal relationship to the problem. The strategic solution almost looks like something very different from the problem itself, but it creates an exponential impact.
This gives me a different kind of intellectual satisfaction.
The intention behind our leadership skills and business strategy workshops is to create value, share learnings and, in the process, further develop our understanding through other's experiences. I believe there is a genuine need for this work.
"There is always more than what meets the eye."
Many people use the word "strategy" very loosely, often confusing it with simple planning. Frequently, they label any linear action as strategy, even when it doesn't shift trajectories.
Organisations need to do better—to do exponentially better—and leaders need to understand how to create turnarounds in challenging situations.
Is your strategy married to a certain way of thinking?
What we enjoy most about strategic frameworks is that they typically come as models that help rearrange data beyond usual analysis. I'm particularly interested in these frameworks and in using multiple models to approach problems.
Here are some frameworks and models:
Scenario planning
Balanced scorecard
Force Field Analysis
BCG Matrix
Impact vs Effort matrix
Read more about them in this article.
The entire concept of a strategic lever fascinates me—how levers have the potential to create massive changes through chain reactions, like a strategic domino effect.
Do I have a favourite framework? That's a criminal question, it's like asking a doctor their favourite medicine. The moment you have a favourite, your mind starts narrowing the way we look at things- leading to a bias.
"Cognitive biases: The tinted glasses you didn't know you were wearing."
We practice brainstorming using various frameworks, then employ the impact-effort matrix to identify leverage points and determine which actions have the highest potential impact.
Identifying that shining star amongst the millions of stars in the sky of our ideas. [Image of a north star with quote]
What role does your intuition play in strategy?
The application of strategy has evolved from winning geographical battles to organisational challenges that businesses face daily. However, this skill isn't reserved only for CEOs and executives—anyone in an organization can devise and implement a business strategy.
The primary difference is that leaders typically have more authority to execute decisions, while those at middle and junior levels often need to influence and convince their bosses of seemingly illogical ideas that could create significant impact.
I'd also like to highlight the relationship between strategy and intuition. Often, a person with strategic skills doesn't realize they're using it until later, when they surprise everyone, including themselves. But looking closely, intuition actually breaks into strategy.
There might not have been a presentation or extensive document, but the insight came from somewhere meaningful. By studying these moments where strategy was deployed, with or without awareness, we can identify common factors and introduce people to that kind of thinking. At the same time, providing them with tools they can access when needed.
Lastly, strategic thinking involves reflecting on questions that evoke something in you. A starting point can be all the headings of this post :)
So scroll back up again.
