7 Things You Need to Realize About Strategic Thinking

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Career Development   Strategy  

“You need to be more strategic.”

That’s an easy thing to say. It’s a very hard thing to do.

Part of the problem is understanding exactly what “more strategic” actually looks like. What’s involved? What does that look like? How do you get there? How do you know when you have arrived?

The other part of the problem is being able to step into that space when it hasn’t been your focus in the past. Signalling your capacity to change. Identifying that you have something to offer. Being accepted as someone who doesn’t just identify problems, but also helps to offer solutions.

An important first step in this journey is recognizing that defining a need to be “more strategic” can actually cover a host of potential behaviours. It might mean truly having better insights into future opportunities, consequences and implications. It can also mean being more discrete. More intentional. More direct. More politically aware. More politically sensitive. More diplomatic. More emphatic. More forthright. More thoughtful.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. If those sensibilities strike you as being in conflict, they are. If any of this prompts you to ask, “Do we know what this strategic thing is, anyway?” your inquiry would not be misplaced.

Navigating all of this requires some clarity on what we mean by …

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