Demystifying Strategic Thinking

Javed walked back angrily to his desk. He has been an excellent manager in the company and has received good ratings. He has successfully delivered on projects with tight deadlines and has been known as one who can deliver in crunch situations. His manager depended highly on him whenever there was a crisis. However, he was not happy with his current performance review. His manager talked about the changing circumstances and the need for strategic thinking before he could be considered for promotion to the next level.

Javed is furious. “Why should my promotion be put on hold when I am going beyond my call of duty to successfully deliver on projects?” he asked Richard who is his HR manager. There were sitting in a coffee shop at the campus. Richard gave a patient hearing to Javed and let him vent his anger. He then asked Javed “Would your daughter get higher marks in mathematics if she continues to do well in algebra but fails to learn geometry as she goes into higher classes?” He continued, “Organizations change over a period of time and the change in scenario drives change in expectations. Managers today are expected to be more focused on solutions and in demonstrating consultative capability as against purely focused on deliveries. You, as a bright manager, are expected to learn and demonstrate these competencies”. Javed retorted “How do I develop these competencies? My manager says ‘think big’ but never explains what it is. Most of the articles I try to read on these topics confuse the hell out of me”. Richard responded, “Why don’t you talk to Vidya? She is good at strategic thinking and her name is always taken as an example of the people in the company who are demonstrating these competencies. Maybe, she can help you with it.”

Javed reached out to Vidya to learn more about strategic thinking. “Tell me Vidya, what does it really mean? How can we demonstrate it? How do I learn and practice it?”  Vidya responded “Oh god Javed! So many questions? Let me share with you what I know about strategic thinking”.

“Strategic thinking is about knowing your customer’s customer and knowing your boss’s boss. If you do this well, you are good at strategic thinking”. Javed asked “Don’t kid. How can learning about customer’s customer and boss’s boss help us in strategic thinking?” Vidya continued “Let me explain”

“Knowing your customer’s customer helps you to be more solution oriented and consultative with your customer. Your customer is always thinking about their customers and having knowledge of their customers will set you up in a position where you can provide significant value add to your customer’s business. Let me give you few examples. If you are manufacturer of components of a mobile, knowing the consumer trends on the usage of mobiles would help you identify the changing shift to smart phones and will help you be better prepared to manufacture/innovate the components for smart phones. If you are a service provider to schools, understanding the changing trends in interactive education will help you foray into technologies required to support the schools. Similarly, if you are a service provider to mutual fund company, knowing the changing trends in the industry and investor sentiments would position you to better service your customer. Having this knowledge not only allows you to understand priorities of your customer but also helps in changing the conversations with your customer. You now have truly earned the right to sit at the table and provide inputs that could positively impact your customer”

Javed asked thoughtfully “That’s truly eye opening. I did not look at things that way and it makes lot of sense. Why should I then focus on knowing boss’s boss? Does that mean I should setup more face time with her?”

Vidya answered “Knowing boss’s boss is not about knowing her personally. Well, if you could do that, that’s awesome but it is not required. Knowing boss’s boss is about knowing her priorities and having a clear understanding of the direction of the group. For example, if your boss’s boss priority is about building in-depth domain/business knowledge in the group, you delivering, productivity releases, is good but if you could use that extra capacity to carefully plan and up-skill the business knowledge of your associates, you will be well aligned to the organization strategy and will be noticed by your higher ups. This part is having an understanding of your organization strategy and aligning your activities and focus areas to match that strategy.”

Javed added “Yes and knowing boss’s boss will help me make my boss more successful and that should help my bonus.” Vidya laughed and said “Yes. Now you know how strategic thinking can have a direct impact on your bonus”

Vidya further added “Strategic thinking is about bringing these two together. It is about how you bring to forth the organization capabilities/priorities that you now better understand (by knowing boss’s boss) to enable the customer to meet their priorities (with the knowledge of customer’s customer). More importantly, the deep knowledge you gained of your customers enables you to provide critical inputs to shape your organization strategy/priorities.”

Javed said “That’s great. But how can I get better at knowing my customer’s customer and boss’s boss. Are there any tips for me to get head start?”

“Well, let me share with you what I do in this space. May be that could help you” Vidya said. “Learning and Visualization are two techniques that I use. While Learning could be achieved by reading or through other secondary sources, I get lot of learning by asking tons of questions. I ask lot of questions about their business and customers, to my customer and similarly, I ask lot of questions to my boss and boss’s boss when I meet up with her on her priorities, challenges and focus areas. This questioning ensures two things – while I gain significant knowledge in a shorter span of time, it also enhances my perception in my customer/boss’s mind as someone who is engaged and interested in the success of customer/organization.”

“Visualization is another powerful technique that I use. It is about placing myself in the shoes of the customer/boss’s boss and see what I would do if I am in their place. I arrive at my own conclusions and make my own decisions/strategy. Then I observe the decisions made by my customer/superior and ask myself why did they make those decisions? How are those decisions different from that of mine? I then have an opportunity to ask questions to know more about those decisions. This added information will enhance my knowledge. Sometimes, I may just disagree on those decisions personally but that does not matter. It is all about learning. Since visualization is all about experiencing ourselves in the position of our customer/superior, this would be an added incentive when I talk to them as I now can speak at their level and in their language. This too would help in enhancing my perception”

Javed responded “That’s great Vidya. This coffee and time that I spent with you is worth a lot. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. I now have a clear picture of what I should be doing to develop strategic thinking”

Vidya signed off saying “Yes Javed. Strategic thinking in short is building deep knowledge of your customer priorities and organization capabilities; and finding ways to meet your customer priorities by leveraging organization capabilities. Best part is that it can be exhibited at all levels in the organization.”

Well, what are you thinking? How simple is it to be strategic?  Do share your thoughts.

Man in the Mirror

The world is fast changing to understand specific needs of the customer to be able to service them. Today, you look at Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix or any other site, they try to understand your individual preferences (based on “likes” on Facebook or based on what you searched for/bought on amazon) to recommend new products/services to you. Similarly, you try to understand the needs/preferences of your boss, colleagues, customers, family, friends, others and meet their expectations. However, how well do you know and meet the preferences of the Man in the Mirror?

We live our lives trying to meet so many people expectations that we often forget about Man in the Mirror. More importantly, we do not understand his strengths (which are his assets) as much as we understand his weaknesses (or liabilities). Now, I cannot blame anyone about it. We are living in a remedial world where the front page of the newspapers carry bad news and what’s sensational on TV is what has gone wrong; not what has gone right. Right from the childhood, we have been trained to focus on fixing the weaknesses to the extent that we automatically grasp what others are doing wrong as against what they are doing right. Similarly, we know our weaknesses much better than our own strengths.

Now, we are natural at our strengths and playing to them would make us more productive, creative, innovative and better at decision making; and this leads us to Success. We are more energized, engaged and focused while playing to our strengths. However, research (from Gallup) proves that only 12% of people play to their strengths most of the day. Why do less than 2 out of 10 play to their strength knowing very well that this would lead them to Success?  How can we increase this number?

Well, before we set on to change the world, it is important that we change the man in the mirror. We could do that through framework CUSIP (pronounced Qu-sip; people in financial services would know this acronym though we will use this in a different context). CUSIP stands for the following: C -> Change the mindset; U -> Understanding your strengths; S -> Strengths focused; I -> Ignore your weaknesses; P – Push technique to move your role towards strengths.

Let us understand each of these areas better:

·         C -> Change the mindset: Before we forge ahead, it is important to challenge our beliefs that have been ingrained in us right from the childhood. We have always been shown a model boy or girl and have been trained by our parents, teachers to be that perfect person. Even if we have shown brilliance in one or two areas, it is not good until we fix all areas. We carry these beliefs so close to our heart that we now ingrain the same in our children. It is important to change this mindset. We need to recognize and acknowledge that we cannot be good in all areas and therefore focus on few areas that we are good at. This is very difficult to do but critical for our success. We need to acknowledge that there are areas that we are not good at and how much ever we spend effort/time in those areas, we are unlikely to go beyond being average. Same time spent in areas that we are natural at (strengths) will bring in exponential results.

·         U -> Understanding our Strengths: Best definition of Strength is given by Marcus Buckingham as a combination of Talent, Skill and Knowledge. There are many ways to discover Strengths (through Gallup’s Strengthfinder assessment or recent Stand Out assessment by Marcus Buckingham – they focus on different areas but could give you an indication of what your strengths are). However, the best way to know your strengths   is by closely observing yourself in your current job and identifying areas that you’re energized in (good sign of your strengths in play) and those that drain you (sign of your weakness in play). This can be done through Capture, Clarify and Confirm process as outlined by Marcus Buckingham in one of his earlier books. I’ll cover this process in detail in one of my future blogs.

·         S -> Strengths focused: Once we discover our Strengths, it is important to put them into practice to yield us success. We need to identify activities in our job that could play to our strength and do more such activities. This has to be result of a conscious plan. We should also start helping our team members in our areas of Strength and start initiating classes/discussions around this area so that we gain visibility in the Organization

·         I -> Ignore your weaknesses: Now, this seems very radical and difficult to accept. How can we ignore our weaknesses? Doesn’t it go against our development, our culture and expectations of our manager? This is where the first step of changing mindset comes in. I am not saying it is easy. I am not asking you to ignore fatal flaws. Those need to be fixed. However, it is important to understand that same time spent on building on strengths (as against improving weaknesses) would result in exponential results that will overshadow the weaknesses

·         P -> Push technique: We need to leverage on push technique to slowly move our job towards strength. This means pushing our manager, colleagues, family members and others to accept our Strengths and work in areas that play up to them. For example, we always wait for our manager to assign us a project/initiative and we try our best to do well in that project. However, Push technique requires us to proactively have a discussion with our manager to identify those projects/initiatives that play to our strengths and get them assigned to us. Push technique also requires us to proactively identify trainings that further build on our strengths; and team up with people who have similar strengths and are able to leverage them well. Push technique, in short, asks us to take charge of our life and drive it in such a way that it leverages our strengths to the maximum thus yielding us tremendous success.

I do understand that this requires a radical change in the way we have always led our life. But this is one time that I ask you to take the risk and bet on the Man in the Mirror. I assure you the returns would be exponential and more importantly, you would find the man in the mirror to be happier. Are you willing to bet on Man in the Mirror?