Win with 4 rules of strategic thinking

Without having to plan strategy alone. Connect, foresee, and anticipate.

What does it truly mean to think strategically?

Before I answer this, I want you to understand the origin of the word "strategy."

Derived from Greek words related to military leadership. Original meaning: "art of a general" or "science of war."

Roots: stratēgós (general), stratēgéō (to command).

It transformed from military strategy to broader applications in business, planning, and decision-making. Evolved to represent comprehensive planning and leadership approaches.

The context of strategy

Strategy, for me, is about leading and commanding in business by identifying the key elements that drive success. It’s about achieving your goals with minimal issues, controlled costs, and mitigated risks.

In other words, it's about "identifying" the "right elements" that help you reach your end goal.

You can’t predict the right elements. Without learning about facts, human behaviours, their environment. And other indirect factors that play key role.

Thinking requires you to observe, reflect, question, and analyze. From what you learn and discover. To make right decision that guide you in the right direction. And that’s what leadership and command are all about.

That enable you to lead with the right elements in place. From people, skills, and tools to culture, capabilities, understanding, and vision. Whether it's at the project level, company level, or societal level.

The wrong way of thinking strategy

In business and life, you build decisions based on planning (assumptions). Living in your own head. Creating strategies that aren’t comprehensive and fail to address blind spots.

These strategies aren’t designed based on discovered facts, information. Or key factors like people, and so they fall short when leading a project, business, or society.

These insights are only attainable through engagement and practice.

I’ve learned that winning requires tangible artifacts, not just made-up thoughts based on historical data or from people disconnected from the playing field.

There are four rules to help you think strategically

Put the right elements in place, and lead to success.

1. Discovery (Ambiguity stage):

Understand the needs: Is it a problem or challenge in the business? Is it an aspiration or desire you want to achieve? Is it about elevating what you do as a business. Improving your product/service, building a new idea, or enhancing your internal capabilities as a company?

Once you understand your need, start by gaining a deeper understanding. Identify the building blocks of that need, from business functions to the market. Remember to locate your need within the three stages:

1. Front-stage: market trends and customers.

2. Back-stage: people, technology, tools, etc.

3. Both stages matter when the need ties to them.

→ This way, you have a full picture of the need.

2. Centric-human thinking and mapping (Diving stage):

Engage with the people in the identified building blocks. Ask questions about the need and map the process to understand where that need resides. What are their experiences? What tools do they use, and what are their inputs and outputs? Dive deep into the elements of their environments to gain a full understanding."

→ This way, you’ll understand the playing factors in the surroundings.

3. Synthesize and uncover insights (Make sense stage):

Group all the data you've captured into categories. Data from different sources and data from different areas. Each category have related and common data within them. Go through this data, analyze it, identify what makes sense, what’s surprising, and derive insights from it.

→ This will help you understand the ask or need, the barriers, and the priorities.

4. Design opportunity and validate (Clarity stage):

Now, you should know how to move forward. It’s clear which direction to take, and you have all the building blocks to form a solution for your need. Think of an opportunity and create a simple prototype, like a diagram flow. Validate it with those you're delivering the need to and iterate."

→ This allows you to assess the viability and feasibility of the solution.

With these four rules, you form a coherent strategic thinking framework. Enabling you to decide whether to move forward or not, based on the final results of testing your opportunity. If the decision is to proceed, you now have a blueprint for executing your strategic thinking.

Strategy and leadership are two sides of the same coin. You wouldn’t be able to lead a successful project, company, or society without designing the right elements in place.

Find the right piano keys and press them to create a beautiful music—that's what strategy and leadership are all about.

Do you engage with others (right people) to form a strategy?

Thanks for reading, we will talk in the next letter.

Ahmed

By the way, here is:

1. A fun way to connect with people that leads to opportunities Toilet Mind

2. A new way to innovate and solve business challenges Neo Strateje