How to Be Strategic

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Here's why and how you can be more strategic in your life and work — even if you aren't a natural strategist.

Years ago I came across an interesting article titled ‘Do you think you're a strategist? You're probably wrong.’ As an INTJ personality type I could deeply resonate with the author’s words:

The best thing you can do for your career is take a personality test to understand your strengths. If you are an INTJ you really are a strategist. If you are not an INTJ, the fewer letters you have that match that, the further away from strategist you are. So get some self-knowledge before you declare yourself a strategist.

Many people don't understand or respect the role of strategy or falsely believe they are strategic. However, self-awareness and a recognition of the skills you have (and don't) are important if you are to make progress in your life and life’s work.

With that said, four letters of a personality type shouldn’t stop you from thinking strategically. Here are six tangible ways in which you can incorporate strategy into your day-to-day life (even if you aren't a trained or “natural” strategist).

Develop a process

A process is a set of structured steps and timelines that you follow to get from A to Z. When you operate according to a sound process you are much more organized and aware of the critical functions that drive your life and work. As you move through the steps you bring to the forefront of your mind things that need to be handled. This forces you to think about things you would otherwise miss.

For some reason, many people tend to believe the myth that process stifles creativity and innovation, which is not true at all. Running around like a chicken with your head cut off stifles creativity. Rigidness and the inability to be agile stifle creativity. Stubbornness stifles creativity.

Silly rules created by incompetent, bureaucratic, or small-minded people stifle creativity. But having a clear and repeatable checklist allows you to constantly drive the things that bring success, and identify and dismiss the things that don’t.

Carve out thinking time

It is critical to think then do. Think then act. The two go hand in hand. Implementation is useless without the substance that rationalizes it. I’m alarmed at the number of individuals I come across, especially in professional settings, who don't stop to think about what they are doing and why. In fact, the most dangerous word in business lingo is "execution".

In the absence of a solid game plan, what could you possibly be executing against? A great example of this faulty mindset is the explanation of why the U.S. lost the Vietnam war. Much of the analyses sums it up to poor judgment and lack of a legit strategy:

In his masterpiece, On War, Carl von Clausewitz observed that the 'first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish ... the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its true nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.'
Unfortunately, U.S. foreign policy decision makers in the mid-1960s committed a supreme act of misjudgment by intervening directly in the Vietnam War. Intervention proved calamitous. Among other things, it violated an established strategic injunction against committing U.S. military power to a large-scale land war on the mainland of Asia.

Project yourself into the future

If you can't see the forest for the trees you have a problem. You've got to craft a greater vision for your life and work, then conceptualize what it takes to get there. The key strategic trait is the ability to be future-oriented AND determine how you can achieve that vision. This doesn't mean keeping your head in the clouds and not being present enough to tackle reality. It means as Trunk stated, you move beyond "what is and focus on what could be".

Forget about complex frameworks

Don't overwhelm yourself trying to follow Porter's 5 Forces and other highly technical frameworks that are really intended for use at sophisticated companies — many of whom barely understand them, if I’m to be honest. You will get so lost.

I studied these complicated frameworks in business school and utilized them in some of the companies I’ve worked for, and I still had to refer back to old texts and references to recall all of the different elements. Even then, I typically only borrowed a few insights that were applicable to my situation.

There are a few classic frameworks, such as a SWOT analysis, that are relatively simple to understand. However, don't get too caught up in highly technical business speak until you’ve mastered the basics.

Focus on what actually matters

You need to know your limitations as your brain only has the capacity to handle so much, so prioritize what matters most. Within a business context, for example, the priority should be adding outstanding value to your audience. You can do that easily by periodically asking:

is my audience growing?
are they happy with my offerings?
am earning on par with the value I'm adding?

When you start to notice a pattern over time where what you are expending energy on is not in sync with what is most important, then stop what you are doing and shift all activities back to the priorities.

Reflect on the past

Hindsight is 50/50. It means keeping it real and actively exercising self-awareness. Looking back helps you identify what works and what doesn't. Then you can apply critical and creative thinking to alleviate the problems and enhance your opportunities.

But here’s the catch: a sneaky little thing called hindsight bias. That's when you falsely claim to yourself or others that "you knew it all along" and subconsciously rewrite history in your own head, distorting the facts and completely missing the opportunity to learn and improve.

If you aren't typically self-critical, you have to incorporate tactics that help you overcome this and other mental biases. Otherwise, you are going to psyche yourself out about critical flaws that could undermine your success.

You may not have innate strategic abilities but as a cultivated individual who wants to live on their own terms, you should get used to wearing a strategic hat. Strategy is not out of reach for you, or anyone else, who is open to training themselves and developing a growth mindset.

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