I wrote a post a few weeks ago about conversations I’ve have with clients about the difficulty of setting aside “strategic” time. In it, I mentioned that “strategy doesn’t have to be a thing.” I believe that.
Too often we assume that unless we’ve set aside dedicated time – often off site – to “think strategically” then it’s just not possible, as though strategy must be some highfalutin, sacrosanct effort. The problem is that those offsite agendas get really full when strategic topics are held at bay and only addressed in the one or two times a year an offsite can take place. Not to mention the fact that the world may very well have passed a given topic by if not addressed contemporaneously.
So: here are a few ideas about how to take “strategy” and “strategic thinking” out of that special category and integrate them into everyday work life:
- Mix up your team meetings. Are all your team meetings the same? Same agenda, same “once around the table” updates? Try this: Set aside one meeting a month that discards that routine and focuses on a single topic that needs collective wisdom. You’ll be amazed by how much you can accomplish in a short time (in fact, setting time boundaries may energize and enhance thinking, based on the “creativity by constraint” paradigm). Along these lines you can set criteria for your topics, for example: Needs to affect the majority of the team; Has to impact our ability to meet broad stakeholder needs; or Must focus on team services or products that will be created or delivered in the future, not today’s work. It might also be helpful to designate the occasional meeting as a “blue sky meeting:” What might we need to do in a year or two that we haven’t spent time thinking about yet?
- Use thinking roles. Do you know de Bono’s Six Hats? An oldie but a goodie: these are specific thinking roles that enable robust, methodical thinking about any topic. There’s the White Hat, who has the goal to bring to light all relevant information; the Red Hat who surfaces people’s “gut” feelings about a problem or solution; the Black Hat who expresses caution or brings to light negative aspects of a topic; The Yellow seeks out benefits and advantages, the Green Hat seeks possibilities and leads brainstorming of new ideas. Finally, the Blue Hat manages the thinking process that leads to decisions. Dole these roles out to your team and see how it elevates your conversation to a more strategic one.
- Stare at the wall. This is advice for the individual: don’t just do something, sit there! Terrific advice from my father. A quiet mind can think more broadly, even unconsciously, about the topics that vex you. Stare at the wall. Or engage a different part of your brain by writing out the topic on a white board, or even just a blank sheet of paper. Bonus points for getting a good night’s sleep – research indicates the brain actually manages connections between disparate thoughts/events while sleeping. I good rest may well help you think differently, and more broadly, ergo strategically, about the conundrum of the day.
What do you think? Are there other ways we can make “strategy” less of a thing, and more integrated into the warp and weave of every day work life?
