Regardless of size, all businesses require strategic thinking to grow. Many leaders consider strategic
While strategic thinking involves these two principles, it is not restricted to them. Rather, strategic thinking is the process of thinking, planning, and doing the work that will lead your company toward your preferred future.
For this reason, it’s important for company leaders to possess a healthy understanding of the value of strategic thinking and how it helps in creating a strategic roadmap for growth. Strategic thinking is, in essence, a systematic mix of innovation, strategic planning, and operational planning. The aim is to develop strategies that improve the chances of success for your company.
The most common approach to launching new products or entering a new vertical (or any other strategic endeavor) is to gauge everything based on past performance. There’s nothing wrong with using past statistics, but more and more organizations are learning that these are not sufficient on their own for developing solid strategies for the future. They are lagging indicators. What’s needed are leading indicators.
It is not just about when to launch the next campaign and how to execute it. Businesses have to proactively work towards creating value for customers. This is where strategic thinking serves you best, by questioning the very reason for pursuing a business objective.
As you develop your Annual Plan (followed by your Quarterly Plan), strategic thinking forces meaningful conversations around what is defined as being most important to the company. It offers alignment in thinking and clarity to you and your team by providing a clear definition around your strategic priorities and the actions needed to support those priorities.
Strategic thinking will take you and your team far beyond the tactical and task-focused “to do” items of the day. It will create a flow that elevates the value of your discussions toward higher-level thinking. In turn, you create a robust Annual Plan that aligns with your longer-term vision and allows you to Think-Plan-Do with much greater strategic intent and ease.
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Annual Planning Playbook: 5 Steps to Create a Winning Annual Plan
How CEOs Can Avoid High-Cost Mistakes in Annual Planning
Rhythm Systems Annual Planning Resource Center
Annual Planning Best Practices
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