5 Powerful Ways to Help You Start Thinking Strategically

There’s only one growth strategy: work hard — William Hague

Strategy builds confidence, because you have a solid framework and action plan of what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. With clarity comes power, and with power is strength. You’ll gain mental strength, because you’ll know exactly what you’re focused on and why.

It’s like a pilot plotting a course to their destination. Careful and strategic planning is considered before take-off. Safety, weather, weight, fuel, and other variables come into play. For example, a pilot is skilled in the technical aspects of flying a plane. She is also skilled in map-reading, leadership, and collaborating with her team, especially the air traffic controllers. Once the plane is airborne after a successful take-off, the captain must now manage and control the plane to get all passengers to the agreed destination safely and in good time. All of a sudden, there’s a faint shudder, and the aircraft tilts violently, with no warning. What happened?

Now to ensure the safety of all four hundred passengers, the captain must adapt to a potentially life-threatening situation with calmness, speed, and clarity. Strategic thinking is all about using the power of your mind to execute your strategy. ‘What is my strategy?’ you ask. Patience, my friend. We’ll get to that. But first, let’s go back to our captain, piloting the 300,000 kg flying chunk of metal hurtling through the sky at 900 km/h.

What is going through our pilot’s mind? Panic? No. If this captain panics and loses control of her thoughts, four hundred humans’ lives are at risk of being lost too. So now is the time to see if the strategy works in reality. All the years of training, flight school, leadership skills, growth mindset, and technical mastery comes into play. This is it.

In a calm and controlled manner, our captain makes a critical assessment of the situation in the most…