Recently I have been assessing candidates for senior roles – a steady trickle of leaders who have their next (and often more senior) role in their sights.  Over time, as well as seeing the unique strengths and areas for development of each individual, I am starting to build a view of the patterns across all the candidates.  One area has particularly intrigued me – the area of thinking strategically.

Now, “strategic thinking” is a rather awkward term, not least because you find as many definitions as you find people talking about it.  Some people think of the kind of deep and detailed analysis that major companies make when they invest in the support of the McKinsey’s of this world.  Some people think of the level of decision-making they like to delegate just one or two levels up the chain.  So, for my purposes in writing, it seems important to define the term.

First things first, I am talking about a behaviour – or more properly a cluster of behaviours.  In particular, I am talking about the ability some leaders have to take a long-term and holistic view of the sum of activities for which they are responsible, setting clear direction based on an understanding of their internal and marketplace context as well as their aspirations for the future.

In truth, whilst the need to think strategically is particularly apparent in an organisation’s most senior roles, it exists from the beginning of our careers.  Early in our careers, for example, it is the difference between executing a task and seeing the full range of tasks for which we are responsible and the context in which we conduct them.  In our first supervisory role, it embraces the need to understand the full range of tasks to be executed by those we supervise and the impact they have on other areas of the business.  With each elevation to a new role the scope of our thinking needs to expand if we are to be truly effective – I often think of people in new roles as needing simply to raise their heads a fraction to achieve a new line of sight:  looking more broadly at the context in which they are working and a little further ahead.

Why is strategic thinking so closely associated with leaders at the most senior levels of an organisation?  Perhaps because, at more senior levels, leaders take on responsibility for deciding on the direction of the organisation and the implications of that direction for the work others do and the way it is structured and organised.  And in what way is strategic thinking more challenging at these levels?  In truth, strategic thinking is about the underlying ability to absorb and process diverse and increasingly complex data, crystallising it into core themes.  It also involves going beyond what is known and certain to make informed guesses about what is possible in the future.  My goodness it looks simple when leaders do it well!  At the same time, the levels of cognitive ability required increase as we take on larger and more senior roles.

But what if you need – or want – to develop your capacity to think strategically in preparation for success in your new role?  This is a question that one client posed in a recent debrief following an assessment and a question I’ll be exploring in the coming days.  I’ll be sharing my ideas – and I hope you’ll share your ideas, too.