“You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.” – Leon Trotsky
A couple of years into my military career, I was dealing with someone who just seemed to have an inhuman abundance of hate for me. I’d never said or done anything to him personally, but he bled schadenfreude like no one I’d met before. One day, I asked a friend of his if he could explain the animosity.
“He hates you because you’re lucky. He thinks you could step in pile of shit and come out smelling like a rose.”
What looked like luck on the outside was actually much more. It was a potent combination of hard work, high standards, and strategic thinking, all of which blended to create an environment of luck. That’s not to say that chance didn’t go the other way from time to time, but the occasional bad flip of the coin ultimately had little impact on my overall drive to succeed.
As I wrote in an article for The Military Leader several years ago, “As long as I stuck to formula… life and career would find a balance and things would work themselves out. Luck would eventually fall my way.
And it all started with strategic thinking.
The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking
In a recent Big Think article, Josh Browning explored how strategic thinking can put you on the fast track to success. Those cognitive abilities are essential in “volatile, uncertain, and highly competitive” environments where outcomes can be unpredictable. “Too many leaders favor reactive, short-term decision-making,” Browning writes, “to calculated, long-term frameworks.” When the stakes are highest, it’s imperative to see the long game.
“A strategic thinker looks at and elevates their entire ecosystem,” he continues. They see the future and inherently understand what it takes to reach that future state. In his book, The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking, Michael Watkins describes the mental disciplines that underpin a leader’s ability to play the long game.
1. Pattern recognition.
“A foundation of strategic thinking is the ability to evaluate a system, understand how all its pieces move, and derive the patterns they typically form.” A strategic thinker sees patterns where others see randomness. They see the forest and the trees.
2. Systems analysis.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when trying to make sense of a system of systems. “A strategic thinker avoids this by creating simplified models of complex patterns and realities.” This allows them to predict behaviors within the system and make informed decisions.
3. Mental agility.
“Because the systems and patterns of any work environment are so dynamic, leaders must be able to change their perspective quickly to match the role they are examining.” They can shift effortlessly between a high-level perspective and the minute details without losing focus on the long game.
4. Structured problem-solving.
Identifying and solving the right problem is fundamental to strategic thinking. To get there, leaders need a process that is both flexible and intentional: “Developing and defining a structure will ensure that the correct problem is addressed in the most robust way possible.”
5. Visioning.
“Great leaders don’t rely on vague goals.” Effective strategic leaders are exceptional at defining a concrete, desired future state and leading their organizations decisively toward that vision. They don’t just dream, they achieve.
6. Political Savvy.
“Politics plays an inescapable and massive role in any collaborative environment.” Probably the most challenging of the six disciplines, political savvy is what separates the doers from the dreamers.
According to Watkins, the common thread weaved through the six disciplines is intentionality. “A good leader can recognize the patterns and systems around them, shift their perspective to keep an eye on the entirety of the goal, develop a structure that moves toward a defined vision, and navigate the complex politics inherent to a system of people.” They get out and play the long game.
Playing the Game
A good friend of mine often describes the effort he puts into planning his professional decisions as “Machiavellian schemes.” He is as deliberate a strategic thinker as I know and considers every option possible before making a choice, leaving little to chance. As a result, he’s maneuvered through a highly successful military – and now civilian – career with deft touch of a classic political realist.
None of that is by chance. It is the purposeful application of strategic thinking. In a 2024 Harvard Business Review article, David Lancefield describes six proven ways to bring strategic thinking into your everyday life.
1. Identify the actions that matter.
Every day presents opportunities. Not all of those opportunities offer strategic advantage. When making those choices, keep your eye on the long game and lean into a tool like the Eisenhower Box to help frame your priorities.
2. Focus on the most important problem.
Multitasking is a fallacy. When choosing where to expend effort, “focus on the biggest problem that needs to be addressed” with an eye toward how that will have the most strategic impact.
3. Explore the choices you face.
In any moment, simple choices can have a significant impact strategically – a task, a conversation, a meeting. Consider your choices carefully, weighing how they can impact you positively or negatively over time. Think strategically about your choices.
4. Master the capabilities required.
Life is a journey of learning and growing. Or not. You choose whether to accept the status quo or push yourself to the next level. That means identifying and aggressively pursuing the knowledge, skills, and abilities you need to achieve your strategic goals.
5. Create alignment between elements of the strategy.
Achieving your desired outcomes requires the deliberate alignment – and balancing – of ways (the paths to those outcomes), means (the resources required to achieve those outcomes), and risk (the obstacles you encounter along the way). And time gets a vote, as well. Strategic calculus is not for the faint hearted.
6. Assemble the resources you need.
Goals without resources are pipe dreams. Identify and assemble the resources required and recognize one immutable fact: you will never have all of the resources you require, so alignment and balance are key. Choose wisely.
“Being strategic — that is, making a coherent set of choices to help you pursue an ambition or goal — is a nonnegotiable skill” for leaders in today’s world. “But,” Lancefield writes, “it can be hard to practice, and strategies are notoriously hard to design and deliver.” Get it right, and there’s little you can’t accomplish.
