Being strategic is all about planning ahead, focusing on your goal, and taking steps to get to it. It is important to consider all angles and their possible negative outcomes. Being prepared for anything to go wrong and having a few backup plans is always helpful.
By focusing on strategic thinking, you are making a strategy to get to an end goal. Throughout history, some of the most revered strategic thinkers were political or military leaders. Some examples of some strategic individuals include Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Jeff Bezos.
Let’s consider an example to explore strategic thinking. You are a high school student and you are planning to sell cookies at the school bake sale. You want your cookies to be the preferred choice and sell more than any other item. Now that you have a goal, you need to get your strategy together.
Consider your assets. You need to have good cookies. If your cookies only look good, you might get some sales but no return customers. In order to have good cookies, you need to either make or buy good cookies.
This means that you might be spending some time improving your cooking skills by taking classes, seeking out a tutor, and practicing. Not only do you need to know how to bake them, but you need good ingredients. By buying very good baking products, your cookies will taste better. Once you have determined the best time to make the cookies before the sale, your assets are covered. Now to consider the next part.
Consider your consumers. What type of cookies are the most popular amongst the students and staff? If you cook some really great oatmeal cookies, but no one likes oatmeal, you won’t get very many sales. Do some research to figure out what product might be best. You can ask your peers or have them sample a few of your cookies to see what they like. Take their preferences into consideration. Once you know what cookies they like, you need to market.
If the bake sale is not already well marketed, you will need to help it out. It is very hard to sell cookies if no one is there to buy them. Putting up some flyers, talking about it to your friends, and posting on social media is a great place to start.
Bring a few sample cookies around and inform everyone who tries them that more can be purchased at the sale. As you finish preparing for the sale, you could consider your competitors, your presentation of the cookies, how to handle rescheduling dates, and more. Now you are ready to sell those cookies.
In the previously explored exercise of bake sale cookies, there are many things to plan out and many steps to take in order to increase the possible positive results of the high school baker. This is just a small-scale glance into strategic thinking.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s strategizing was most likely very different from Jeff Bezos.’ Every situation will be different when coming up with a strategy but every part of it is based around planning and action. Strategies involve having set ideas in place that can be followed in certain circumstances.
When coming up with your own strategy, make sure to consider all angles. You are forming a road to your goal and you want to make sure that you get there. Anticipate your opponent’s moves, plan for reactions, and counterstrategies.
Take plenty of time to think through your plan and ideas. Don’t rush or get distracted when working on your strategy. With plenty of time and practice, you can become a master at creating strategies.
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