Let us begin by listing some of the skills, knowledge and attitudes attributed to this jurisdiction.
Strategic thinkers:
* Is the systems-oriented, it is the holistic thinking and use the helicopter view.
* Embrace creativity, innovation, intuition, and insight to understand the process (
* Think futuristic and embrace visionary thinking
* Act like organizational radar (or antennas) scan of internal and external environments
* Has a secular mindset
* Serve as an explorer, with heighted curiosity and alertness
* Has the ability to keep an open mind to new ideas, and adapt to changing environments
* Has the willingness and courage to outwit, beat, and out-run competition
* Is knowledgeable about their industry and experts in their specialization
* Know their financing and risk management
* Has a bit of entrepreneurial spirit
* Manages to communicate (good to ask probing questions and listening)
* The knowledge to inspire and lead teams.
Clearly, the type, weight, and relevance of these skills components varies significantly across industries and organizations. For example, General Electric (GE), selected five competencies (which GE calls growth characteristics) to identify areas for development among their top people. The five GE growth features are:
* Imagination (seen as a champion of innovation, have the courage to take risks on both people and ideas).
* External focus (to understand customer needs, market dynamics, industry trends and the competitive landscape).
* Clear thinking (specify strategy into action and makes decisions and communicates priorities).
* Outside (connects with team inspires people to perform at a higher level, promotes an environment that recognizes and celebrates individual and cultural differences).
* Domain expertise (gains perspective through varied experiences and building skills; strives to increase knowledge with up-to-date information).
That is how Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE described the process in an interview with Harvard Business Review (2006): "We came up with a tool that we use as part of Session C, our annual HR review. It is a matrix showing the five growth traits and their components. You are rated as green, yellow or red on each. Everyone should have a red because it is not about picking winners or losers - it is to say everyone needs to work on something. It will guide development for the top 5,000 employees in the company in years. "
Now the important question is this: How can organizations as well "gardeners", cultivating the arts and skills of strategic thinking in their future leaders? Is it possible to develop these skills, and if so, how? What specific management development and training should be a high potential men and women to be better strategic thinkers?
Unfortunately, early literature on this topic is limited. It is typically focused on leadership development initiatives and learning aspects of strategic thinking without giving adequate consideration to have in place supportive organizational culture, systems and structures (
Day and Schoemaker (2008) have also drawn attention to the importance of corporate climate and culture in the cultivation of strategic thinking. Their research discovered that "three primary qualities distinguish vigilant leaders from those who strive for operational excellence. An alert leader:
* Focuses externally and remain open to different perspectives,
* Applies strategic foresight and probes to the second order effects and
* Encourages others to explore broadly by creating a culture of discovery. "
Day and Schoemaker called organizational leaders to set the tone at the top, and to systematically develop initiatives and programs throughout the organization that promotes awareness and cultivate the three qualities that they had identified. Therefore, organizations should first give a culture (championed by top management and board) that supports and rewards strategic thinking rather than to punish or discourage behavior and attitudes that are listed at the beginning of this section. Specifically, organizations should review their structures and systems that can act as barriers in the way of strategic thinking. Consider, for example, traditional annual salary and performance reviews that focus on a predetermined checklist of features or on individual goals and objectives, these reviews often result in poor morale, a lack of teamwork, internal competition, lack of interdepartmental cooperation, and dysfunctional silos. Or consider the widespread linkage of budgets to compensate, which encourages to play games and short-term thinking at the expense of the organization's strategy. I feel strongly that these systems often create fences around and within the organization to act as shackles and blinkers that inhibit creative and futuristic thinking, and urge leaders to wear black negative thinking hats (de Bono 1999). Indeed, such systems and reward the leaders to think inwards, to strive for short-term operational efficiency rather than long-term effectiveness, and can drive managers to become more risk averse, conventional and precedent-oriented.
Therefore, I believe that organizational leaders must begin by breaking those barriers, to tear down the fence, throwing off shackles and blinkers, and control the use of black hats. Additionally, organizations erect radars in different parts of the world to scan the environment for opportunities and threats. They must also establish systems and incentives that actually reward exploration, vigilance, futuristic and creative thinking, and other requirements that promote strategic thinking. Only then should organizations invest in leadership training and development programs to enhance the strategic thinking skills those identified as future leaders.
In his book, Learning to think strategically, Sloan (2006) argued that it is a myth that strategic thinking can only be learned by a few people - it is not an inborn talent, but one that can be learned and cultivated. Sloan emphasizes the importance of informal learning, pre-successful life experiences, dialogue and coordination between intuition and analytical thinking. She also covers cross-cultural aspects of strategic thinking.
Similar Pages Goldman (2007) that "the expertise of strategic thinking is not a product of innate ability and pure serendipity. This is special experiences (personal, interpersonal, organizational and external) occurring over 10 years or more." Goldman's research showed the ten experiences that have contributed to the development of strategic thinking: Family upbringing / education, and general work experiences that will be a director, who mentor, if you are challenged by a key colleague, monitoring results and benchmarks do strategic planning in the lead with a major growth initiative, dealing with a threat to organizational survival and vicarious experiences.
To further improve strategic thinking, Goldman contains four recommendations:
* Include strategic thinking as a formal part of leadership development programs;
* Requires managers to develop strategic thinking in their subordinates;
* Promote an early involvement in strategic planning and benchmarking activities;
* Support activities include experiential learning and maximize the benefits of strategic planning sessions.
The informal on-the-job learning methods detailed by Sloan and Goldman is clearly superior to the traditional teaching approach through case studies or read about successful strategists. But there is much to be said for the benefits of the interactive team and individual projects and exercises used in some leadership development programs. We Meirc Training & Consulting design our seminars with this interactive perspective. There are several off-site programs that are designed with management training and learning in mind. For example, such a program they IMPM (International Masters in Practicing Management), as described by Mintzberg (2004) in his book Managers Not MBAs. The program is implemented in partnership with several international business schools in six countries. It is based on the idea of learning to be associated with managerial experience and the use Mintzberg's five managerial mindsets: reflective, worldly, analytical, collaboration, and action logic.
Of course there are several other programs and techniques that are specifically aimed at cultivating creativity and strategic thinking. Consider, for example, lateral thinking, as recommended by Edward de Bono, or scenario planning sessions, as practiced at Royal Dutch Shell Company. Whatever their limitations, these developmental activities is considered effective by many researchers and practitioners.
In a fascinating article, Jacobs and Heracleous (2007) suggested that leaders can improve their strategic thinking by playing games. These games involve building business models in the organization, brand, competitors, or industry, and so on. According to the authors, these games offer a useful complement to traditional strategic planning processes and help to open up and inform the debate on a organization's strategic challenges. It will be interesting to see if such strategy games can generate creative and strategic thinking in the same way as teambuilding game was expected to improve teamwork.
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