I'm often asked are great strategic thinkers born or are they made and my answer is always yes it's like so many important and valuable human capabilities a mixture of Nature and nurture and experience you're not going to become a world-class marathoner if you don't have the right physiology the right muscles the right lungs but you still need to train very hard and it's very similar with strategic thinking you certainly are born with an endowment some people are naturally better at it than others but there's so much you can do to develop yourself and I always tell people don't worry about the endowment focus on the Improvement because my research shows definitively that you can get much better at being an effective strategic thinker I'm Michael Watkins I'm a professor of leadership and organizational change at the D business school in loan Switzerland my book is the six disciplines of strategic thinking strategic thinking has always been a critical skill at the top leaders must be able to recognize emerging challenges and opportunities establish the right priorities to focus their organizations and critically mobilize their people to do what's necessary to adapt to the many changes that are going on today in the research I did on strategic thinking I identified six key mental disciplines that underly your ability to recognize prioritize and mobilize pattern recognition is a foundational discipline of strategic thinking the ability to find the signal the important information in what can be a sea of noise not just absorbing what's happening but thinking about why thinking about connection when Grand Masters look at a chessboard they don't just see pieces they don't just see the layout of the board they see the most important patterns that exist in that configuration they see opportunity they see concentrations of power they see potential vulnerabilities at the heart of your ability as a leader to navigate complet lexity is the discipline of systems analysis it's absolutely essential of course that systems models capture the most important features and dynamics of the system that you're talking about but given the very very high levels of complexity today no human being and indeed so far no computer is able to flawlessly model the entire set of variables and interactions that constitute a complic ated system one example I use is climate where today we have very good models of climate but they're absolutely simplifications of reality they model large chunks of the atmosphere for example in ways that are really kind of um crude almost but they do capture the most important features of the overall climate system in a way that lets you make good predictions as you focus on the discipline of mental agility it's important to understand this idea of level shifting there's a CEO I work with who describes this as Cloud to ground thinking the ability to move from a high level perspective to be in the clouds to see the big picture of what's going on but also to drill down into the detail when necessary the great strategic thinkers I know are able to move between those levels of analysis and do so fluidly and and also intentionally structured problem solving is what you do with teams to help them engage in rigorous processes of Framing and solving the most consequential problems that the organization faces the structured part is really essential because it ensures that you're doing a good job of truly solving the right problem that's the framing part and then generating and testing the right options so that you end up with a robust solution there can be many stakeholders involved that have an interest in what happens and so it's essential therefore to establish a process that moves people through that you know Framing and solving of problems such that at the end of the process they're in alignment if not enthusiastic about what happens going forward at its core visioning is about identifying the future to which you are trying to move your organization a compelling portrait of where we are going to go together and why we should feel excited about getting there there's a core tension you need to manage between ambition and achievability air too far on the side of ambition you're creating something that's unrealistic people won't feel like they can really accomplish and ultimately does exactly what you're trying not to do which is to demotivate people air too far on the side of achievability it's too easy it's not ambitious enough it's not exciting for people it doesn't really fundamentally motivate them and finally politics is an essential part of every human organization and there's simply no avoiding it there are certain tactics that you can use that will help you Influence People a classic example of this is what's known as sequencing strategy this is really about being thoughtful about the order in which you communicate with people and how you engage in order to build momentum in the directions you want the organization to go I'm going to talk first to Christian and then I'm going to talk to Stephanie and if I have Christian and Stephanie on board then getting Robert on board is going to be easier and I need to be careful in the process not to overplay things in a way that causes Trudy to feel threatened by what I'm trying to do and start to do things to mobilize potential opposition just think about this process of moving people step by step to a place that they wouldn't have gone in a single leap the people making the decisions about leaders Futures are more and more waiting the importance of strategic thinking capability in their decisions about whether you will advance or not and this just amplifies the importance of focusing as much as possible on building your strategic thinking capability it really is the fast track to the top to learn even more from the world's biggest thinkers get big think Plus for your business