“You need to be more strategic.”
Chances are you’ve either heard this or said it at some point in your career.
It’s something several of my coaching clients have been told at times. And for them, unless they’ve been given a really concrete idea of what their boss is (and is not) looking for it’s been really frustrating.
What does ‘be more strategic’ even mean?
If you’re the person receiving the message your first task is to find out what being more strategic means to your boss.
Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. write that we’re entering the age of the strategist, and give three tips to becoming more strategic:
1. Understand what strategy really means in your industry
2. Become expert at identifying potential disrupters
3. Develop communications that can break through.
Here’s a great example of getting 1 and 2 right, but missing the mark on 3.
Brooklyn born engineer Steven Sasson was pretty darn #strategic. He invented the world’s first digital camera and a system to store and play back the images. It was 1975 and he could see a future for his industry for a photographic system that didn’t use film, or paper, or any other consumables (item 1 above). He not only identified the coming digital disruption, he anticipated it and invented for it (item 2). And in 1989 he created the first modern DSLR camera with his colleague Robert Hill. The company he worked for made billions from the patent on his invention, but despite multiple presentations of the camera to senior executives they resisted going digital themselves until it was too late.
The company he worked for was Kodak. They filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
You need more than bold vision and great thinking to be strategic. You must also be able to excite and inspire, to bring your people along with you.
I’m exploring the concept of how to be more strategic at the moment. Got any other examples of strong strategic thinking? And what tips do you have about how to be ‘more strategic’?