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strategicthinking.ppt
This document discusses strategic thinking and provides guidance on how to develop strategic thinking skills. It defines strategic thinking as the ability to see current realities and possibilities to make choices that lead to desired outcomes. Key aspects of strategic thinking include having a vision and goals, analyzing systems and relationships, considering long-term forces and impacts, and anticipating risks. The document provides questions to guide strategic thinking around goals, trends, opportunities, potential actions, and evaluation criteria. It also notes some common biases like anchoring and confirmation bias that can interfere with strategic thinking.
strategicthinking.ppt
- 1. What is it?Where can I get some?
- 2. A plan to achieveour goals. Exists at multiple levels – all linked. Helps us make wise choices as conditions change. As conditions change, the plan itself evolves.
- 3. “At this point,there is no generally accepted definition of the term, no common agreement as to its role or importance, and no standardized list of key competencies of strategic thinkers.” Wikipedia
- 4. Strategic thinking is learned,not innate. Strategic thinking cannot be taught.
- 5. The ability tosee what is - and what could be – and make choices that lead to desired outcomes. Analysis Vision/Goals Seeing systems
- 6. Vision/goal driven. Analytical. (Makes sense of diverseinput and data.) Sees systems. (causes, relationships, leverage points) Focused on long term forces, trends, impacts. Weighs decisions against criteria. Thinks across past, present and future. Anticipates unwanted events and risk. Allows for “intelligent opportunism” Questions assumptions, habits and conclusions.
- 7. What isour goal/purpose? What key problems, causes and solutions do we exist to address? What are past, current and possible future trends? What are the key opportunities and threats we face? (Where is greatest leverage? Where is greatest risk?) What will it take? What are possible course of action? What are the implications of these choices? What criteria will we use to choose and evaluate a course of action? How does our plan intersect with other goals/plans?
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- 12. When facedwith a choice, we may ANCHOR on a certain good outcome we think will occur. It can be hard to remain open to other options or implications. Anchoring is often the result of over-the-top urgency to “just do something.”
- 13. We allhave biases. We select for information that supports our viewpoint and experiences. We tend to disregard information that doesn’t fit our beliefs/values.
- 14. SELF-REFLECTION What aremy own strengths and weaknesses related to strategic thinking? What adjustments can I make? How might I improve my own strategic thinking skills and habits? How can I provide more strategic leadership – regardless of the position I hold?
- 15. GROUP REFLECTION Howcan we (continue to) develop a shared analysis among the staff and board? How can we (continue to) nurture a staff culture that promotes strategic thinking? What skills/habits can we learn to improve our ability to think and work strategically as a staff team?
Editor's Notes
- #3 In organizations like ours, the word strategy gets thrown around an awful lot. We all know strategies are essential. But the meaning can be frustratingly elusive. What do we mean by strategy? What does the word mean in the context of our organizations? A plan to achieve our goals Actually, strategy implies plans that exist at many levels (sectors, programs, strategies, projects – annual and five year) – all interlinked What are strategies good for? Helping people work together Helping everyone see how their work is connected Helping us make choices as conditions change Helping us evaluate effectiveness and learn Helping us marshall the resources we need to be effective What makes creating and implementing shared strategies hard? It’s overwhelming It’s hard to see all the pieces at one time and keep them in mind It’s really hard to figure out what the most appropriate and useful goals should be It’s hard to make choices and prioritize We never have full information and the conditions are always changing. Nearly of the reasons why it is hard to create and implement strategy are actually due to the fact that strategy is about making choices, and we never have perfect or complete knowledge. We have to do our best to make good choices given the data we have. The process of making choices today in order to achieve desired outcomes in the future is often called strategic thinking.
- #4 A lot of my own thoughts about strategic thinking were developed about 10 years ago when I did a pretty thorough review about what the business world and fields of cognitive psychology and economic decision theory could teach social change organizations about strategic thinking. So, as I gathered my thoughts before this training, I did some quick internet searches to learn what new developments there might be. A quick stop at Wikipedia was not at all encouraging. This slide is a direct quote from one of the first paragraphs of the entry on strategic thinking. In fact, the entry goes on to say that about the only thing most experts agree upon is that traditional models of strategy making (primarily based on strategic planning processes) are not working.
- #5 It didn’t get much better from there. I found these two sensible but contradictory statements in a short article by Gregory Foster, a professor who teaches strategic thinking skills to America’s top military brass at one of our nation’s war colleges. His article summarized five points he has learned about strategic thinking over many years. These were two of his top five. It’s a fairly sobering assessment. Stepping back from the obvious ironies, there is an important lesson to be drawn. This fellow argues, and I think I agree, that strategic thinking is only learned experientially. Trainings like this may provide some useful frameworks and may help us become more conscious of some of the things we do that limit our ability to think strategically. In other settings we can use scenarios to practice and evaluate the outcomes of our choices. But primarily we learn how to think strategically over time through the real-world process of thinking, doing and evaluating.
- #6 Despite my failed attempt to find wisdom through wikipedia, I do have some thoughts – some borrowed and some new – about what strategic thinking is and what it requires. Strategic thinking, in my book, is the ability to see both what is and what could be – and then make choices that lead to desired outcomes. If I had to boil strategic thinking down to just three components, here are a few big ones: Strategic thinking is first and foremost future oriented and focused on achieving long-term vision and goals. Strategic thinking is the ability to see entire systems – or at least as much of them as we can know – including underlying causes, inter-relationships and leverage points in a within a system. Strategic thinking involves the careful analysis and interpretation of data.
- #7 Ha. I couldn’t resist adding just a few more components. In addition to the first three (from the previous slide) I’d add several more: Strategic thinking involves weighing choices against established criteria. It requires us to make decisions that take into account the past, present and our best predictions about the future Strategic thinking includes anticipating and to the extent possible planning for unwanted events and risk. Strategic thinking is the ability to recognize and seize key opportunities – without being blown off course. Strategic thinking is also an approach that openly and continuously questions assumptions and tests conclusions. We could spend a long time discussing each of these blocks. What do you think of this list? Which of these is especially challenging? What’s missing from my list? Who is willing to share some examples from MACED’s work when you’ve put many of these components into action? What did you learn from some of those experiences about what it takes for a group of people to think and work strategically?
- #8 Honest to goodness, I don’t know any other method for thinking strategically other than taking the time – individually and/or collectively – to think through a series of questions each time we are faced with a changing circumstances and are trying to settle on a course of action. When in doubt…ask yourselves what’s the goal? What’s our purpose. Even when the answer seems obvious. Even when the need for action seems crushingly urgent. What’s our goal. Some of the questions on this page don’t get asked fresh each time there is a decision to be made, but they serve as reference points that we should review and take into account.
- #9 We’ve all heard the expression “To a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” It’s a familiar expression that describes a failure to think strategically – a failure to adequately assess the current reality and to question our own assumptions. And it contains some useful wisdom for anyone who wants to avoid falling into the trap of hammering something when another tool would be more effective. In fact, I think there is a lot of wisdom to be gained by looking at the question of strategic thinking from the other end of the telescope. Instead of trying to define precisely what strategic thinking is, let’s take a look at what it is NOT. Once we understand some of the things that limit our ability to think strategically, we can make important adjustments as individuals and groups.
- #10 A major stumbling block for any group of people who is trying to make good strategic decisions together is a lack of shared analysis about the world we live in, how it operates, and how we hope to change it. If you and I have a fundamentally different understanding about the major problems and causes we are working to address, we aren’t going to be able to make choices based on a coherent analysis. We may argue over different ideas or positions, but our lack of agreement is often much deeper. In KFTC we deal with this all the time. If we are doing our jobs, we have new members every day, and new staff members several times a year. Those individuals come into the work with fresh and important ideas. But they have no real experience with or understanding of the power relationships we have to contend with. They may have very different assumptions about what the underlying problems and causes are that we are working to address. In order for anyone to contribute their ideas in a strategic way, we have to take time together to review and refresh our shared vision and analysis. This is a constant process. It requires us to develop and use good “reference points” so that we don’t have to start from scratch with each conversation. And it requires us to be open to re-thinking pieces of our analysis as circumstances change and new people bring new input. Our organizational analysis is fairly durable, but never fixed. People working within the organization are always questioning and working to deepen the shared analysis story, but it’s a problem if some folks are operating with an analysis that is fundamentally in conflict with the group’s.
- #11 Uneven power relationships are a fact of life – both within and beyond our organizations. For those of us who are charged with thinking strategically (and all of us are) its important to understand that uneven power relationships can impact how we think about and make choices about the world we live in. The amount of relative power you have can affect the solutions you think are possible and the goals you are willing to aspire to. Our analysis of the primary problems that exist and the causes of those problems is certainly informed by the power we have, or feel we have, in society. And the input and data we consider when making decisions can also be affected unconsciously by our own assumptions about whose voice matters, who we think is credible, and who had input into the process. Simply being conscious and aware of some of these impacts can help us find ways to incorporate diverse perspectives, see the world more fully and accurately, and evaluate our choices more strategically.
- #12 Here are two familiar tendencies that can limit strategic thinking. Some leaders may tend over-emphasize or focus on the importance of the long term goals, without taking into account current power relationships, organizational capacity, design and implementation challenges, and other important realities. This can lead others to feel the organization is just “tilting at windmills” and can leave people feeling ineffective. On the other hand, some of us may tend to zero in on activities or next steps as ends unto themselves – without thinking deeply about how those steps align with larger goals and strategy. This can lead to decisions that are not well connected – or worse in conflict with – the organization’s long-term goals. It can also result in individuals and organizations that are so busy pursuing the “urgent” and “immediate” tasks that we don’t take the time to step back, evaluate and realign our work with the larger goals. Strategic thinking requires a balance that leans towards the long-term, but is mindful and respectful of the importance of effective implementation.
- #13 There are two more tendencies that can limit strategic thinking. One is called ANCHORING. It’s what happens when we settle – often very quickly – on an idea as the best approach. If we anchor ourselves to that position without being open to the full implications or without considering other options, we can miss very important alternatives. In my experience, anchoring is often the result of an over-done sense of urgency. “We have got to do something!” It’s especially common in coalition work, where we rarely devotes the time to developing a shared analysis. Instead we get on conference calls and people anchor on their preferred idea for how to move forward. It can be hard – but important – to invite people in these moments to revisit our goals and then take time to brainstorm and evaluate a range of possibilities. Here’s a common example of anchoring from KFTC: Any time 2 or more KFTC members have gotten together in the past ten years, at least one person has wanted the organization to pay for large billboards to promote ourselves. There seems to be a commonly held view that if we only did that, we would get lots of new members, our issues campaigns would be successful, and all would be well with the world. It may be a very good idea. It may even be a strategic choice. But we are engaged in “anchoring” if there is no thought given to a) what’s the goal? B) what other options exist to achieve that goal, C) What are our projections/assumptions about the benefits of bill board advertising vs other options, and can we test those? (For example, how realistic is it to think that bill boards could they really pay for themselves with new memberships?).
- #14 Lastly, it’s important to point out that we all carry around biases that influence how we see the world and make sense of new information. Our underlying values and life experiences shape how we interpret data and the conclusions we reach. To a great extent, we aren’t even conscious of the layers of meaning and assumptions upon which our choices and actions are based. Author Peter Senge has created a metaphor and image he calls the “ladder of inference” to describe how it works. Here’s how the ladder works: I observe the world before me. I select data from what I observe. I add meaning to what I have selected. I make assumptions based upon the meaning I’ve added. I draw conclusions, which prompts feelings. I adopt beliefs about how the world works. I make choices and take action based on those beliefs. And most of that is unconscious and takes place in just a millisecond. On the one hand, this ladder is a necessary process for dealing with a complex world. But it can also limit our ability to think and respond to the world with a full and fair understanding of reality. Senge suggests some ways we can strive to avoid making unwise leaps up this ladder: Make your own thinking clear and transparent: here are my assumptions and conclusions Invite others to test your assumptions and conclusions Respectfully inquire about the thought process that others are using. In non-judgmental ways, invite people to make their own thinking transparent, and encourage people to revisit the lower rungs of their own ladder.
- #15 Overemphasis on short-term or long-term? Anchoring out of fear/anxiety or extreme sense of urgency Unwillingness to examine bias?