6 key abilities of strategic thinkers (you can learn them)

I'm often asked, are great strategic thinkers born or are they made

And my answer is always yes. It's like so many important and valuable human capabilities

a mixture of nature and nurture and experience. You're not going to become a world-class marathoner

if you don't have the right physiology, the right muscles, the right lungs

But you still need to train very hard. and it's very similar with strategic thinking

You certainly are born with an endowment. Some people are naturally better than others

but there's so much you can do to develop yourself. And I always tell people, don't worry about the endowment

Focus on the improvement because my research shows definitively that you can get much better

at being an effective strategic thinker. I'm Michael Watkins. I'm a professor of leadership and organizational change

at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. My book is The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking has always been a critical skill at the top. Leaders must be able to recognize emerging challenges and opportunities

establish the right priorities to focus their organizations, and critically mobilize their people to do what's necessary to adapt to the many changes that are going on today

In the research I did on strategic thinking, I identified six key mental disciplines that underlie your ability to recognize, prioritize, and mobilize

Pattern recognition is a foundational discipline of strategic thinking The ability to find the signal the important information in what can be a sea of noise

Not just absorbing what's happening, but thinking about why. Thinking about connection

When grandmasters look at a chessboard, they don't just see pieces. They don't just see the layout of the board

they see the most important patterns that exist in that configuration. They see opportunity

They see concentrations of power. They see potential vulnerabilities. At the heart of your ability as a leader to navigate complexity

is the discipline of systems ysis. It's absolutely essential, of course, that systems models capture the most important features

and dynamics of the system that you're talking about. But given the very, very high levels of complexity today, no human being, and indeed so far no computer, is able to flawlessly model the entire set of variables and interactions that constitute a complicated system

One example I use is climate, where today we have very good models of climate, but they're absolutely simplifications of reality

They model large chunks of the atmosphere, for example, in ways that are really kind of crude almost

But they do capture the most important features of the overall climate system in a way that lets you make good predictions

As you focus on the discipline of mental agility, it's important to understand this idea of level shifting

There a CEO I work with who describes this as cloud thinking The ability to move from a high perspective to be in the clouds to see the big picture of what going on but also to drill down into the

detail when necessary. The great strategic thinkers I know are able to move between those

levels of ysis and do so fluidly and also intentionally. Structured problem solving is what

you do with teams to help them engage in rigorous processes of framing and solving the most

consequential problems that the organization faces. The structured part is really essential

because it ensures that you're doing a good job of truly solving the right problem. That's the

framing part. And then generating and testing the right options so that you end up with a robust

solution. There can be many stakeholders involved that have an interest in what happens

And so it's essential, therefore, to establish a process that moves people through that, you know

framing and solving of problems such that at the end of the process, they're in alignment

if not enthusiastic, about what happens going forward. At its core, visioning is about identifying

the future to which you are trying to move your organization. A compelling portrait of where we are going to go together

and why we should feel excited about getting there. There's a core tension you need to manage

between ambition and achievability. Err too far on the side of ambition

You're creating something that's unrealistic. People won't feel like they can really accomplish

and ultimately does exactly what you trying not to do which is to demotivate people Err too far on the side of achievability It too easy It not ambitious enough It not exciting for people It doesn really fundamentally

motivate them. And finally, politics is an essential part of every human organization

and there's simply no avoiding it. There are certain tactics that you can use

that will help you influence people. A classic example of this is what's known as sequencing strategy

This is really about being thoughtful about the order in which you communicate with people

and how you engage in order to build momentum in the directions you want the organization to go

I'm going to talk first to Christian, and then I'm going to talk to Stephanie

and if I have Christian and Stephanie on board, then getting Robert on board is going to be easier

And I need to be careful in the process not to overplay things in a way that causes Trudy

to feel threatened by what I'm trying to do and start to do things to mobilize potential opposition

Just think about this process of moving people step by step to a place that they wouldn't have gone in a single leap

the people making the decisions about leaders futures are more and more waiting the importance

of strategic thinking capability in their decisions about whether you will advance or not

and this just amplifies the importance of focusing as much as possible on building

your strategic thinking capability it really is the fast track to the top

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