Strategic thinking, execution, and breakfast choices

I was chatting with a colleague at an event recently, and she said "oh yes we've been trying to get some interest in your programme, but every time we mention strategic thinking to the senior leaders, they say, we don't need people to do more strategic thinking, we need them to execute!"  

What I hear in this is a very narrow definition of strategic thinking – the belief that strategic thinking is exclusively the thinking that produces whole-of-business strategy. What I also hear is that strategic thinking is something only the exec need to be concerned about.  

What I like to say instead?  

You can think strategically about what to have for breakfast.  

Of course you can. Because fundamentally, strategy is about how we are going to achieve a certain goal or goals.

So let's test out this claim… If you can think strategically about what to have for breakfast, we must be able to pinpoint all the elements of strategic thinking in this decision.

Firstly, we need a goal. Here are some longer term possibilities: What are you trying to achieve with your nutrition? Lose weight? Maintain or put on weight? Longevity? Maximum energy? What about in the nearer term? What are you trying to achieve in your day?

We need some guiding philosophies. What is important to you when it comes to nutrition? How do you want your values to influence your breakfast choices? They say you are what you eat - who do you want your nutrition to make you BE? A body builder? An endurance athlete? A good role model? A vegan with a clear conscience? A fit and healthy career person with optimal brain function?

Then there are all the contextual factors - What do you have in the pantry/fridge? How much time do you have? Who else is having breakfast with you? What do you like to eat? What do they like to eat? Where/when will you eat breakfast? When will you next be able to eat? The list goes on…

Weighing all this up and being honest with ourselves as we decide what to actually eat is where the rubber hits the road. What approach do I need to take to my nutrition, and how will that help me achieve my goal? What criteria will help me keep on track with this decision each morning? What breakfast decisions can I live with? What is realistic for this meal? Will this breakfast choice help me achieve my goals?

So back to the idea that only senior leaders need to think strategically…

Whilst I agree that only senior leaders need to be concerned about the direction and strategy of the business as a whole, that is not the only type of strategy needed to make a large, multi-layered organisation go.

I challenge the idea that strategy is only strategy if it concerns the whole organisation.

General managers need strategies for their group. Regional managers need strategies for their region. Functional managers need strategy for their function. Team leaders need a strategy for their team. Even technical experts who may not have a management or leadership role, but are making recommendations at a strategic level, need to be able to think and speak in the language of strategy. They, along with every other manager, need to understand how their work contributes to the organisational strategy. That means that strategic thinking is everyone's job. It just looks a little different for each role.

The senior leader's cry of "we just need them to execute" betrays the frustration of being in a role where you decide the direction, but how it is actually achieved in a practical sense is out of your hands. Senior leaders can't make everything happen, they just need to be skilled at making the high level decisions and communicating them. This is the classic problem of alignment: aligning effort from the top to the bottom of an organisation so that everyone is pushing in the same direction and all of the front-line day-to-day efforts achieve the overall strategy.

Sounds simple. It's not. But it is possible.

When strategic thinking is seen as everyone's job, then alignment comes. Functional, regional or team goals are nested in organisational goals. Strategies are nested in higher level strategies, but carefully designed for the unique context that each area of the business is operating within. Organisation-level strategy becomes the bedrock on which sub-strategies are built. Yes it is execution, but for execution to produce alignment, it must be strategic execution.

To illustrate this point, take the 'business challenge' that my STDP participants work on throughout their programme. It can be a piece of strategy, sure, and many have found the clarity they need to produce a strategy. However, it can just as easily be some other challenge to be addressed, problem to be solved, or outcome to be achieved. 'Business challenge' is the broadest possible term I could come up with that describes what sort of thing can be used to apply the STDP material to during the learning process.

Just like mindless breakfast choices can get us off track with our nutrition goals or make our daily energy levels go awry, random or misaligned execution choices can get an organisation off track with achieving strategic organisational goals. Granted, there are not multiple layers of decision-makers involved in breakfast choices, but next time you're making that choice for yourself, check in… is this execution, or strategic execution?