![\"Business](\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Business-Plan-Business-Business-Idea-Planning-1553776-300x200.jpg\")
Apply strategic thinking to create a business strategy that is coherent, unifying and strategically advantageous.<\/p>\nApply strategic thinking to create a business strategy that is coherent, unifying and strategically advantageous.<\/p>\n
Strategic Thinking is a comprehensive planning model that covers innovation, strategic planning and operational planning.\u00a0 It is a process that applies vision development, strategic planning and operational planning to develop business strategies that have a greater chance for success.\u00a0 Strategic Thinking defines the manner in which people think about, assess, view, and create the future for themselves and others.<\/p>\n
More and more organizations are learning that past experience is not always the best basis for developing future strategies.\u00a0\u00a0 Leaders need to thoughtfully consider how to create value for their customers.\u00a0 The exercise of strategic planning, while important, tends to answer the \u201cwhat\u201d and \u201cwhen\u201d of business planning and rarely captures the essence of how to think strategically to successfully execute.\u00a0 It is always done at the senior executive level.\u00a0 That\u2019s where strategic thinking comes in.\u00a0 Strategic thinking is the \u201chow\u201d and \u201cwhy\u201d of the planning process.\u00a0 It answers the question, \u201cWhat should we be doing, how we should be doing it and why?\u201d\u00a0 It is departmentally focused and aligns with the organizational strategic plan.<\/p>\n
Strategic Thinking requires research to examine the voice of the customer, the employee and industry best practices.\u00a0 The research phase is a process of examining everything we do in our various roles, understanding the needs of our customers and ensuring that all of this is linked to clearly defined strategic imperatives.<\/p>\n
If we compare strategic thinking with strategic planning and operational planning we see that:<\/p>\n
Strategic Thinking Provides Insight into New Opportunities & Growth<\/strong><\/p>\n Strategic Thinking evaluates our business strengths and weaknesses and looks for new and better ways to improve.\u00a0 At its heart, it is able to anticipate major shifts in the competitive marketplace and identify emerging opportunities.\u00a0 As well, it uses innovation to move us outside of our comfort zone and towards opportunities for new products and services that will give us a competitive edge.\u00a0 This approach is vital for growth, higher profitability and greater returns for investors and owners.<\/p>\n Strategic Thinking Directs You to Managing Resources Effectively<\/strong><\/p>\n Most companies struggle with productivity and how to deal with limited resources of money, people and time.\u00a0 Strategic Thinking focuses the management team on markets that are most likely to succeed and so helps organizations avoid waste and costly mistakes.<\/p>\n Strategic Thinking Prepares You to Respond Quickly<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the most difficult challenges that CEOs face today is the rapid change occurring in the world.\u00a0 Strategic Thinking is a proactive methodology that incorporates a conscious mindset of preparing for change and having plans in place to deal with it.\u00a0 This gives companies the opportunity to take advantage of opportunities and avoid damage from unforeseen risks that may lead to negative consequences.<\/p>\n Strategic Thinking Leads to Better Decision-Making<\/strong><\/p>\n Strategic Thinking provides a way of seeing things through the eyes of the customer.\u00a0 In so doing, business leaders gain insight that they may have missed before.\u00a0\u00a0 They become more adept at formulating strategies to reach potential prospects and are able to make more logical, confident decisions for their business.<\/p>\n The Centre for Strategic Management offers a useful explanation of the strategic thinking approach.\u00a0 It focuses on relationships, multiple outcomes, holism and boundaries, the environment, the larger system and feedback.\u00a0 It asks five key questions:<\/p>\n The work in this phase is usually done before the strategic thinking team works together.\u00a0 The key research elements are to identify and understand the Voice of the Customer, identify the extent to which employees are engaged within the organization culture and to benchmark internally and externally to identify best practices.<\/p>\n Strategic thinking is driven by both organizational and customer requirements. The departmental strategies must address the organizational and customer needs. The strategic thinking process ensures these two are aligned.<\/p>\n Customer satisfaction measurement is an integral part of the strategic thinking process as organizations use customer satisfaction survey results to drive improvement initiatives. Customer satisfaction levels are impossible to assess unless customer\u2019s expectations, priorities, and needs have been determined. This is done through voice of the customer.<\/p>\n One of the challenges faced by senior leaders when developing their strategic plan is how to turn their vision into reality.\u00a0 To transform an organization into the one they envision takes more than great strategy and implementation, it also requires that strategy become an integral part of the very fiber of the organization.\u00a0 This is where strategic alignment fits in.\u00a0 Aligning everyone in the organization with the strategy is one of the most important things the leadership team can do beyond formalizing and implementing their strategies.\u00a0 Alignment makes it much easier for the leadership team to push the organization in the direction they intend.\u00a0 Without good alignment trying to move forward becomes a struggle.<\/p>\n Benchmarking is the process of continuously comparing and measuring an organization against public and private sector leaders anywhere within and outside themselves in order to gain information that will help them take action to improve their performance. \u00a0The data collected through benchmarking helps the strategic thinking team to create strategies and objectives that ensure the organization meets its defined benchmark goals.<\/p>\n The work in this phase is usually done as an off-site.\u00a0 Although this can be accomplished in 2 days, it is preferable to put aside 3 days for the full strategic thinking planning.\u00a0 The team will start by reviewing the results of the strategic thinking research phase.<\/p>\n The first element in the strategy phase is to create a vision.\u00a0 This is an ambitious view of the future that everyone in the organization or department can believe in, one that can realistically be achieved yet offers a future that is better in important ways than what now exists. When the vision is clearly articulated, everyday decisions and actions throughout the department will respond to current problems and challenges in ways that move the department toward the future rather than maintain the status quo.<\/p>\n Innovation is a critical part of creating the vision.\u00a0 Through innovation the team explores different scenarios and possibilities.\u00a0 It takes them on a journey into new territory and provides them with creative tools and techniques to explore all the possible future opportunities.<\/p>\n The strategies close the gap between the present and the \u201cideal future\u201d as defined in the vision. Essentially, the strategies translate the strategic vision into key strategies and objectives. The strategies answer the question \u201cwhat\u201d you will do over the next one to two years to work towards realizing the strategic vision.<\/p>\n Risk must be a part of developing strategies. An analysis of what might prevent the team from reaching these strategies will help ensure all roadblocks are surfaced and removed. This analysis will include an identification of the risks together with contingencies to overcome them.<\/p>\n The operational plan identifies the actions required to ensure the short-term strategy objectives are successfully realized. Strategies often fail at this stage owing to a lack of detail and too much assumption that people will know what the steps involved are.\u00a0 No plan ever failed because it had too much detail.<\/p>\n Each strategy\/objective is different in its timeframe. Some are completed in a matter of weeks or months. Others are longer-term.\u00a0 A lessons learned meeting should be held when the strategy\/objective has been completed. If it is a longer-term strategy, interim milestones should be considered for a lessons learned. This will identify any concerns, issues, and\/or challenges as well as the successes to manage through the remainder of the operational plan.<\/p>\n Strategic Thinking is an exciting and effective tool that organizations can apply as a whole and for each department or division.\u00a0 Its goal is to out-think, out-plan and out-maneuver other forces or competitors. The notion of combat implies a central premise of competition in the pursuit of “fulfillment.”<\/p>\n Leaders who embrace Strategic Thinking gain a broader and more innovative way of thinking and a longer-term oriented and systematic view of their business.\u00a0 This ultimately leads to more innovative and effective business strategies and profitable business growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apply strategic thinking to create a business strategy that is coherent, unifying and strategically advantageous. What is Strategic Thinking? Strategic Thinking is a comprehensive planning model that covers innovation, strategic planning and operational planning.\u00a0 It is a process that applies vision development, strategic planning and operational planning to develop business strategies that have a greater… Effective Business Planning Needs Strategic Thinking<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":3040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[127,27,848,1223],"class_list":["post-3038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","tag-business-planning","tag-strategic-planning","tag-strategic-thinking","tag-voice-of-the-customer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3041,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions\/3041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Strategic Thinking Approach<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
![\"strateicplanning\"](\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/strateicplanning.png\")
<\/p>\nResearch Phase<\/h2>\n
Voice of the Customer<\/h3>\n
Employee Engagement<\/h3>\n
Benchmarking<\/h3>\n
Strategy Phase<\/h2>\n
Vision<\/h3>\n
Strategic Planning<\/h3>\n
Operational Planning<\/h3>\n
Measurement<\/h3>\n
Start Your Strategic Thinking<\/h2>\n