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“Local governments must think, plan, and budget strategically to ensure long-term perspectives are reflected in their decision making and the sustainability of their service delivery commitments and models.”

  -Carl Neu, The Center for the Future of Local Governance

 

“The best way to predict the future is to create.”

  -Abraham Lincoln 


 
Strategic thinking is the way in which people in the organization think about, assess, view, and create the future. The future is happening today, and the most successful organizations are those that understand the dynamics of the "big picture" in which their decisions are being made. It is a way of understanding the fundamental drivers that affect your organization and rigorously (and playfully) challenge conventional thinking about them.

Thinking strategically is about challenging assumptions of what business you are in – why you do what you do; finding and developing unique opportunities to create value for your organization by enabling a provocative, and creative, dialogue among people who can affect the strategic direction of the enterprise. Strategic thinking is input into strategic planning.

When governing boards and senior leaders of the organization are thinking strategically, thinking becomes visionary, which is characterized by breakthrough thinking about the future.

New Strategic Directions works with the governing body and   senior leadership to: 

  • Think holistically, framing a “world view” in light of a continuously changing environment. 
  • Identify key change drivers and re-think the organization’s strategic direction by scanning the internal and external environment. 
  • Enable a provocative and creative dialogue to identify unique opportunities for moving forward.
  • Re-think the current direction in light of the changing environment.
  • Shift the view of the organization as a static structure that may be rebuilt  periodically to an organization that is dynamic, flexible, learning and continuously improving.
  • Identify scenarios for the future of the organization.
  • Provide input for strategic planning.

When the organization probes its view of the future, it usually finds an array of unexamined assumptions that tend to converge around incremental changes. Strategic Thinking is the process in which leaders invent and then consider, in depth, several varied scenarios of equally plausible futures with the objective to bring forward surprises and unexpected leaps of understanding in which a corporate strategy is formed. Considering a range of potential scenarios is the only way to develop robust strategies that will position the organization securely for any future that may occur.

The task, then, is to challenge this view and prod the organization to think seriously about the possibility that things may not continue as they have by creating alternative views of success for the organization to consider in developing strategies for determining the desired results.  Strategic Thinking begins with a strategic analysis of the current situation:

Strategic Analysis is concerned with understanding the Strategic position of the organization in the context of the environment.  What changes  are going on in the environment, and how will they affect the organization’s strategic direction and subsequent strategies?  Strategic analysis includes:

  • stakeholder analysis,
  • environmental scanning of the external environment,
  • identifying and analyzing  trends impacting the organization’s strategic direction,
  • assessing the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges,
  • continuously monitoring the environment and analyzing trends that may impact the organization’s strategies.

See also: Strategic Planning, Strategic Management, Strategic Leadership, Strategic Communications

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