Tag Thinking

How to Improve Your Strategic Thinking

Steve Keating Leave a comment

One of the many challenges for large, publicly traded companies is that they tend to run their businesses on a quarterly basis. They, of course, will deny this forever, but for many publicly traded companies, the most important quarter in the history of the company is whatever quarter they are currently in.

They have to “make the numbers,” or Wall Street will crush them.

That causes them to jettison a lot of long-term strategies in favor of short-term programs designed to achieve whatever quarterly results they had committed to achieving.

Surprisingly, the need for short-term programs at the end of a quarter most often comes from flawed long-term strategies developed earlier in the year. And better long-term strategies can only come from better strategic thinking.

Strategic thinking can be defined as the ability to analyze complex situations, anticipate future challenges and opportunities, and develop long-term plans to achieve specific goals. It involves a combination of critical thinking, problem-solving, and vision casting to make informed decisions that align with broader, long-term objectives.

Key elements of strategic thinking include:

Vision-Oriented – Focusing on long-term outcomes rather than just immediate problems.

Systems Thinking – Understanding how different elements interact within a larger system.

Analytical and Creative Thinking – Using data-driven insights while also considering innovative approaches.

Proactive Approach – Anticipating risks and opportunities before they arise.

Decision-Making Under Uncertainty – Navigating ambiguity with calculated risks.

Strategic thinking is a must for leaders, businesses, and even individuals who want to remain competitive, adaptable, and successful in achieving their objectives.

Leaders can improve their strategic thinking by developing a mindset that balances big-picture vision with practical execution. Here are key ways you can enhance your own strategic thinking.

1. Expand Your Perspective

Stay informed about industry trends, global developments, and emerging technologies.

Read widely—books, reports, and case studies—to gain diverse insights.

Engage with people outside your immediate industry to understand different viewpoints.

2. Ask Better Questions

Challenge assumptions by asking, “What if?” and “Why not?”

Use first-principles thinking to break down complex problems.

Regularly reflect on long-term goals and whether current actions align with them.

3. Develop Pattern Recognition

Analyze past successes and failures to identify trends.

Observe competitors and market shifts for early signals of change.

Use scenario planning to prepare for multiple possible futures.

4. Think in Systems, Not Silos

Understand how different parts of your organization interact.

Recognize bottlenecks, dependencies, and leverage points for impact.

Align resources and efforts to maximize synergy.

5. Make Time for Strategic Thinking

Block out time for deep thinking, away from daily firefighting.

Engage in brainstorming sessions with your team to explore long-term strategies.

Schedule regular reflection periods to assess progress and refine strategies.

6. Test and Iterate

Implement small-scale experiments to validate strategic decisions.

Use feedback loops to adjust course quickly.

Balance bold vision with flexibility to adapt to new realities.

7. Develop Decision-Making Discipline

Avoid analysis paralysis—focus on key priorities and take calculated risks.

Use data-driven decision-making while keeping intuition in check.

Learn from past decisions to refine future strategies.

All of this takes time. That’s where your mindset comes in. If you consider it a waste of time to block time on your calendar to think, then it’s unlikely you’ll do much, if any, of this. You will instead constantly be congratulating yourself for putting out one fire after another. If your mindset tells you that setting aside time to think and plan is a great investment of time, then you’ll likely prevent the fire in the first place.

Imagine what you can accomplish in the time you would have been firefighting. Whatever those accomplishments might be, I’ll bet they won’t include scrambling to achieve some goal at the end of a quarter or the end of a year. Because those goals will have already been met.

That’s a whole lot more productive and a whole lot less stressful way to lead an organization. But of course, as always, it’s your choice to make.

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Thinking Strategically

Steve Keating 3 Comments

I’ve always found thinking to be a good thing to do. That’s especially true before you say something. Our thoughts create our words and our words frequently become our actions. We need to think about that in particular. 

But I sometimes think that “overthinking” causes as many problems as not thinking. Different problems for sure but problems all the same. I often marvel as I watch people prepare a presentation. They think and rethink every word as they put it in their PowerPoint. I’ve seen people make literally dozens and dozens of changes to the wording on their slides. All the while giving almost no thought as to how they were going to say those words. 

They fail to realize that when it comes to presenting effectively how you say something is roughly 5 times more important than the something you say. Overthinking tends to paralyze us. It prevents us from taking action until everything is perfect and since everything is rarely perfect… you see what I mean. 

But there is also what I would call an elevated level of thinking. This is the level we want to strive for when thinking about the big stuff in our lives and careers. It’s known as Strategic Thinking.

Thinking strategically involves adopting a holistic and long-term perspective to make informed decisions that align with your goals and objectives. I hope you paid attention to that previous sentence. If you did then you understand that absent goals and objectives there will be no strategic thinking either. So if you have no goals and objectives for your life, or you have no interest in developing any, you can quit reading now. But if you are goal oriented then here are some ideas to help you think more strategically. 

While we are looking at strategic thinking in terms of business in this particular post understand that thinking strategically can have a huge impact on your personal life as well. 

  • Define your goals: Clearly identify your short-term and long-term objectives. What do you want to achieve? Having well-defined goals will guide your strategic thinking and decision-making process.
  • Understand the bigger picture: Develop a deep understanding of the internal and external factors that can influence your goals. Analyze market trends, industry dynamics, competitive landscape, and any other relevant factors that can impact your success.
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis: Assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to gain a comprehensive understanding of your current situation. This analysis will help you identify areas where you can leverage your strengths, overcome weaknesses, exploit opportunities, and mitigate threats.
  • Think long-term: Strategic thinking requires a focus on the long-term implications of your decisions. Consider how your choices today can impact your future outcomes. Avoid short-sighted thinking and prioritize sustainable strategies that can provide lasting benefits.
  • Analyze risks and uncertainties: Recognize that strategic decisions involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Identify potential risks, evaluate their likelihood and potential impact. Develop contingency plans to address them. Be prepared to adapt your strategy as new information emerges.
  • Embrace creativity and innovation: Strategic thinking often involves exploring new ideas, approaches, and perspectives. Encourage creativity and innovation within your thinking process. Challenge conventional wisdom. Be open to unconventional solutions that can give you a competitive advantage.
  • Consider different perspectives: Engage in critical thinking by considering various viewpoints and alternative scenarios. Avoid confirmation bias and actively seek out dissenting opinions. This practice helps you anticipate challenges and make well-rounded decisions.
  • Prioritize and allocate resources: Strategically allocate your resources, including time, money, and manpower, to areas that have the highest potential impact on your goals. Make informed trade-offs and invest in initiatives that align with your strategic objectives.
  • Continuously learn and adapt: Monitor the outcomes of your strategic decisions and be willing to learn from both successes and failures. Adapt your strategy as necessary based on new information, changing circumstances, and emerging opportunities.
  • Communicate and collaborate: Strategic thinking should not be confined to an individual endeavor. Foster a culture of strategic thinking within your team or organization. Encourage open communication, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas to collectively contribute to strategic decision-making.

Strategic Thinking is a skill that develops over time with practice. By consistently applying these ideas and reflecting on your decisions, you can improve your ability to think strategically. Strategic Thinking is a life skill and it’s one that the most successful people never stop working on. 

Think about that!

Thinking is a Pretty Good Thing to Do

Steve Keating 4 Comments

My first job out of college was working for an electronics company designing new to the world products. I was at my desk one day staring at a circuit board when my boss walked up and asked what I was doing. 

I said I was struggling with how I was going to move electrical current between two large capacitors without burning up the transistors in between. I added that I was thinking about the best way to go about it without adding unnecessary complexity to the circuit board.

His reply was instantaneous and abrupt. He told me “you’re not paid to think, you’re paid to work.” 

I guess he wasn’t all that familiar with how the design process worked. But thinking is actually a good thing to do no matter the situation. Most people know that. Most people also invest very little time in actually thinking. They claim to not have time. 

We live in a time where information is coming at us at all times from every source and direction imaginable. It never stops. We’re also told that successful people maximize every second for the sake of productivity. 

But we’re seldom told what the absolutely most successful people do. The most successful people set aside time almost every day to sit and think. Sit quietly and alone to just think. 

They know that life is cause and effect. They know that their decisions are their keys to success. So they make “think time” a priority. They think through all big decisions, they consider the consequences of the consequences of the consequences of their decisions. 

Highly successful people outthink the average person. It’s not necessarily because they are smarter it’s because to set aside time to truly think. They don’t care if some average person calls it daydreaming. They don’t care if someone calls them a slow thinker. They will not be deterred by people less successful than them. 

Maybe you need to think about thinking a little more because thinking is a pretty good thing to do. Block time on your calendar for thinking. Do it every single day. It’s okay if your mind wonders a bit, don’t limit what you allow yourself to think about. Some of your time will be very strategic thinking and some of your time will be “what if” and “why not” thinking. All thinking is better than no thinking. 

Think about that!

Think About This…But NOT for Too Long

Steve Keating 5 Comments

Thinking is a very good thing to do. It seems as if a whole lot of people would be better off if they did more of it. Everyone knows that it is best to think before they speak. Clearly not everyone knows it’s best to think before they post. I am shocked by what people will tweet or post to Facebook (is that still the name?) and other social media sites. I can’t believe they thought at all before posting some of what I see and if they did we are in worse shape then I would have ever believed. 

But doing too much of a good thing can turn it into a bad thing. So it is with thinking. 

Overthinking can be as bad as not thinking at all. Sometimes it’s even worse because overthinking can create problems that were not there in the first place. It can even create problems that are nothing more than a figment of the over-thinker’s imagination. 

The most surprising thing about overthinking is that it seems the smarter you are the more prone you are to fall into the overthinking trap. All that knowledge can cause you to over prepare and over analyze. 

It’s good to be thoughtful and use your experience when making a decision. Just be mindful as well of the danger of paralysis by analysis that too often comes with overthinking. 

Overthinking is the most common way smart people sabotage their own success. 

Partly because of what I do for a living a attend a lot of conference type meetings. That’s where I see smart people endlessly toiling away in front of a screen trying to create the perfect PowerPoint slides. Thinking and rethinking and thinking some more about exactly what they want to say. Changing one slide after another to get the exact “look” that will make their message connect with their audience. 

In 1000’s of meetings like that with a countless number of attendees I have never heard “wow, that was the most awesome PowerPoint I’ve ever seen, it totally made the presentation.” 

If you think your PowerPoint is the centerpiece of your presentation your thinking has missed the mark. PowerPoint should be a bit player behind your staring role. Whenever I see people fussing with their PowerPoint right up until the second they are presenting I know they are over thinking their presentation. WAY overthinking. 

Just an aside to all the presenters reading this. If you know what you’re talking about then use your slides to merely support your presentation. If you don’t know what you’re talking about then don’t be doing a presentation. 

Napoleon Hill wrote one of the all time greatest books titled “Think and Grow Rich.” He lived long ago but his principles still perfectly apply today. Obviously I never met him but I’ll bet if he would have written a sequel to that book it would have been titled “Over Think and Lose The Riches You Earned by Thinking. (Okay, I know his editor would have made him shorten the title but you get the point)

Do not limit your success by overthinking. Once your knowledge, your experience and your instincts tell you to act then act. Don’t let the same brain that informed you of what to do take that decision away from you by thinking and rethinking. Act!

Are you an “over-thinker?” Think about it…but not for too long.

The Process of Thinking

Steve Keating 2 Comments

I’m a big fan of processes. I tell salespeople all the time that there are two ways to sell, by process or by accident. 

Doing things by process allows you to do things much more consistently. Having a process makes it easier to transfer skills from an experienced employee to a newer, less experienced one.

I believe in the power of planning and when people ask for my help with planning I share a well thought out eight step planning process. Things done by process are simply done better. 

Except when they are not. 

Some companies have processes that are so good they haven’t changed them in years. There is a story about a young accountant in the UK in the late 1990’s who was in his first annual budget review meeting. There was an item in the budget for “screens” and the amount was substantial. He asked what the screens were for and no one seemed to know. The line item had been there “forever” so each year they added a percent or two for the item and they moved on. 

Well the young accountant was more curious than the more experienced people on the team so he did a little investigating. He determined that the line item first appeared in the budget in the early 1940’s so in fact it wasn’t there forever. It turns out the “screens” were first purchased to place on top of the manufacturing plant’s smokestacks. Apparently there were planes from another country flying over England at night. They were using the fire at the bottom of the smokestacks as targets for the bombs that were dropped from the planes. 

The young accountant did some additional research. He discovered that it had been a good many years since that other country had sent bombers over England to destroy their manufacturing plants. And yet screens were still being replaced each year because it was part of the company’s process. 

And that’s when processes are not so good. 

When a process, no matter how effective it may have once been, is allowed to replace thinking a host of problems can ensue. 

Most leaders would tell me that their processes are well thought out. I’m sure that’s true but leaders shouldn’t be asking themselves if their processes are well thought out. The question every leader must ask, about every single one of their processes is, how old is the thinking that developed the process?

A process should never replace thinking. No team member or employee should ever be discouraged from questioning a process. Every process can be improved. Every process exists in a changing environment. To assume that any process never needs to change along with it’s environment is a very dangerous assumption. 

So think about every process that exists within your organization. Do you know how it came into existence? Do you know if it is still needed and why? Do you know when it was last updated? Do you know the last time anyone even thought about the process before mindlessly following along without even considering why they were doing it? 

If you can’t answer every single one of the questions with a high degree of specificity then you may have an opportunity for real improvement in your organization. Question every process and don’t stop until you have an answer. It’s likely those answers will bring improvement with them.

Never let a process, even a good one, keep you from thinking about how it could be improved. If you stop thinking you may one day find that even though the bombing has stopped you’re still hearing imaginary planes overhead. 

Creating Your Personal Reality

Steve Keating 3 Comments

It’s very likely that you are far more powerful than you think. So powerful in fact that you have the ability to create your own reality.

How do I know that about you? Well because you’re human. Every human has the ability to create their own reality. Not only do they have the ability, they in fact DO create their own reality. Every person on earth creates their own reality out of their thoughts.

What you think you become. What others think of you matters very little when compared to what you think of yourself. Negative thoughts about yourself linger for a long long time. Self-doubt kills more dreams than all other obstacles combined. Yes, even more than lack of money. Actually, lack of money isn’t much of an obstacle at all, far more dreams are killed by lack of effort than lack of money.

You attract people to you who are often identical to the person you believe you are. If you think you’re a loser than you’ll invite losers into your life. Now the term loser isn’t very nice but I can’t think of a more apt description. Misery indeed loves company and if you think you can’t succeed you’ll attract people who think the same as you.

Since we are all basically a compilation of the five people we spend the most time with you want to make certain your five people build you up. If those 5 people tell you often enough that you can succeed you may start to wonder if they could possibly be right…and that can be the start of something magical.

Henry Ford said “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

You have to be so careful about what you think. Your thoughts become your words and your words become your actions and your actions become your reality.

You’re creating your reality this very day. Everything you think, say and do plays a part in the future you’re creating for yourself. If you master the discipline of controlling your thoughts there won’t be much else in life you can’t master.

My recommendation is to start EVERY day with five minutes of positive self-talk. Those might be the most vital 5 minutes of your day. Those five minutes will set the tone for the next 1435 minutes of your day.

Those five minutes could very well change your life. Now that’s reality!

Just Thinking

Steve Keating 1 Comment

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Mostly about thinking. Very serendipitously I’ve seen several blog posts about thinking in the last few weeks too.

I think that thinking is good. I wish more people would try it. It really helps when making decisions and I particularly recommend taking a moment or two to think before you speak. It’s amazing what a difference that moment or two can make.

If you think as you look around (I don’t normally recommend multi-tasking but in this case I’ll make an exception) you’ll realize that pretty much everything you see began as a thought. Someone thought about making the device you’re reading this on. If someone printed it out for you to read that was very thoughtful of them. Everything begins with a thought.

So thinking is good. But is it always good? I think not!

Our thoughts lead the way for us. If our thoughts are positive our life tends to be positive. If our thoughts are negative our lives tend to be as well. Henry Ford once thought “whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” That was a great thought but it only became great when he said it out loud.

You see as good as your thoughts might be thinking alone is not enough to succeed. Thoughts can begin the process of success but action finishes it.

Mountains of failure are built on the foundation of good thoughts, or as some people might call them, good intentions. But those good thoughts all have one thing in common…a lack of commitment to take proper action to bring them to fruition.

Every person reading this has had great thoughts that they never followed up on. Those great thoughts could have become something special if only….

If only they had been acted upon.

So keep thinking but don’t just think. Take action. Massive, directed, intentional, unstoppable daily action. It may lead to nothing. It may lead to learning what to do differently next time. But it may lead to something incredible that makes a difference for you, for those close to you or maybe the world.

What do you think about that?