Be more strategic
Ever been told you need to think more strategically?
If I had a £10 note for every time a leader said they’d been told this, I could fund your strategy consultants. Joking.
We both know no one’s funding them with tenners.
But I do hear leaders constantly being given this hollow feedback. It tells you nothing and it implies there’s some mystical, intellectual ‘other level’ you haven’t unlocked yet.
So you try to fill the gap with mentor coffees, reading long (likely AI-generated)LinkedIn think-pieces, buying books to sound more strategic instead of actually being strategic.
I know because I’ve done it.
I once covered for a boss in weekly meetings with the CEO. I’d spend the night before googling ‘phrases to make me sound more strategic’ rather than having a real world view on the pre-read. That was on me. I didn’t need phrases. I needed to speak up and get clearer direction on what strategy was.
But I’ve also spent enough time with real leaders, in real environments, to know this:
Our job as leaders is to take the complex and make it simple, and take the simple and make it compelling.
In my view strategy, at its core, can be made compellingly simple:
1️⃣Know where you are
Your market, team, environment, constraints.
The big picture, not the optimistic one.
2️⃣Know where you choose to aim
What future are you trying to create?
For your business, team, customer? Why? What if?
3️⃣Create the bridge
What are the steps, choices, and trade-offs that connect here to there?
4️⃣Expect the bridge to wobble
Think about your last plan that survived about three weeks. A competitor launched something, someone resigned, or budgets shifted.
It’s how you adjust without losing the plot.
5️⃣Bring people with you
If no one understands your strategy, you don’t have one. You have an idea.
But steps alone aren’t strategy. Steps tell you what to do. Strategy is what you prioritise.
That involves perspective, being data-led but human-centric, anticipating challenge, navigating the resilience of your plan, your market, your team, yourself.
Real strategic thinking isn’t mystical. It’s human, practical, and far more accessible than it sounds.
The necessary skills grow fastest when leaders aren’t drowning in jargon or trying to sound clever. And when we stop offering direction as vague as ‘be more strategic’.
What if we were less generic in our developmental conversations, less ‘keep doing what you’re doing’ and more trying to:
👉Strip away the noise
👉Give leaders clarity
👉Make the invisible feel accessible
👉Show people they already have more capability than they think
👉And stop mystifying things
If we want leaders to think more strategically, maybe we should start by making strategy something they can actually see, feel and practice, not something they’re told they’re missing.
I’m genuinely curious: what does ‘be more strategic’ mean to you? Am I missing something?
Share your view, it’ll help more people.
Just don’t charge a tenner for it 💷
