Being More Strategic: Excuses?

Being More Strategic: Excuses?

More and more these days, it is important to consider being strategic regardless of our position in an organisation.

 

I am not a strategy specialist. I am coming at this topic ultimately from the perspective of my role as a psychologist and coach, helping people, teams and organisations to step back a bit and consider; ‘Is there another way I (we) can do life and work?’.

 

Being strategic can be as simple as an employee stepping back and making decisions about priorities and making time to devote to various tasks rather than just keeping the head down getting through task after task as it is assigned. At the other end of the scale, being strategic might be a CEO or a managing director establishing future plans for the entire organisation.

 

In a previous blog I discussed the challenges of being strategic and the difference between

‘strategic thinking’ and ‘strategic planning’.

 

 

Reflections on Being Strategic

 

If  you read my previous blog  on this topic, you’ve hopefully taken some time to consider your own strengths in  this area and  any challenges  you might have in getting both elements – ‘thinking’ and ‘planning’ – of being strategic working for you.

 

Here’s some of my reflections:

 

In my role as a coach and facilitator of change in individuals, teams and organisations, I am somebody who wants to support transformation in as many people as I can. I often notice themes coming up again and again across clients. In noticing these themes across people and situations, this gives me clues as to what many more people might be thinking. I give myself time to reflect on these themes by asking more questions, discussing the themes with others and through reading and writing about the topics.

 

To return to a definition of ‘being strategic’ from the first blog in this series

(What do we mean by ‘Be More Strategic?’ Thinking vs planning. (adaptastraining.com))

Being strategic is taking an outside: in view of how things are, and could be done. It’s making sure that an individual, team or organisation’s core competence or competencies are consistently focusing on directional choices that will best move the individual, team or organisation toward its new future, with the least risk and in the most orderly fashion. It’s being proactive rather than reactive. It’s  being committed to a vision and purpose.

However, just because I notice a theme and have done the thinking on it, doesn’t mean that my clients on a macro level are going to recognise the importance of addressing this particular theme. There are going to be other things on their minds, depending on their specific role and objectives. My ability to plan strategically as a business owner means I cannot just make a new set of plans to match this new theme. This will confuse my clients and possibly destroy my business. Therefore I need to sit separately in the ‘thinking’ and ‘planning’ and interweave both in making future plans.

 

My comfort zone in ‘being strategic’

 

I find I sit most comfortably in the strategic thinking side of things. I have endless ideas on what could be done and how things could be done. But because I have so many ideas and only a small team and very little time outside of my busy days, I am not great on strategic planning. Notice my excuse ‘only a small team and very little time outside of my busy days’?  Having a small team does not mean I  cannot  be great at strategic planning! I  just have to make the time to prioritise.

 

Many people I have coached are great at strategic planning but do not take the thinking time to consider new ways of doing things. They tell me that changing how things are done would create too much risk and so therefore there is no point in wasting time doing the big picture thinking.

 

 

Your ‘be more strategic’ challenge: Part 2

 

What excuses might you be telling yourself that are holding you back from taking adequate time to ‘be strategic’ NOW ?

Who’s Shoe Is It Anyway?

Updated July 25th 2023

Ever been a pedestrian, a cyclist or a driver of a car? Ever get beeped and shouted at and felt like you didn’t deserve it and instantly hated the person who beeped and shouted at you?

I recall a situation, where whilst driving through Dublin city, (oh and being a woman of course!), I veered slightly into the incorrect lane at a junction (that I think, if truth be told most people would agree is slightly confusing). The guy in the car behind me, pulled up alongside me, rolled down his window and literally cursed and abused me all the way to the end of the road, a good half a mile. It was quite shocking. Yes for that half a mile or so, I was angry, and bordering on getting quite upset at his shouts, cursing and remarks. However, I kept my head together, told myself he must be having a bad day and eventually stated firmly and loud enough so that he could hear, ‘ It must be difficult being you’.

On that note, and following on from last weeks blog, I though it worthwhile to look at the rationale behind the focus of another of our processes at Adaptas™. Our process ‘Who’s Shoe is it anyway?’ examines our ability to understand emotions and to empathise with others.

Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ famously said: “You can never understand someone unless you understand their point-of-view, climb in that person’s skin or stand and walk in that person’s shoes.”

The objective of ‘Who’s Shoe is it anyway?’ is to enable participants to see how similar they and their customers are. We all have fears, pain, desires etc. Regardless of our experiences, and/or how we live our lives, how we brush over issues or face up to them, at a core level our emotions are all the same.

I endlessly find it amazing, how we are not taught about our emotions in school and are not provided with communication skills training. If we understood our emotions from a young age, we could learn how to have better emotional management. We would also identify and empathise with other people more readily.

Of course the business case here is that managers and leaders who are emotionally intelligent are consistently recognized as being more effective and successful in their roles.

Ineffective managers are expensive, costing organizations millions of dollars each year in direct and indirect costs.  Ineffective managers make up half of today’s organizational management pool, according to a series of studies (e.g.Gentry & Chappelow, 2010).

If managers and leaders can genuinely take another persons perspective into account, they are much more likely to get the results they require. Perspective taking can be applied to solving problems, managing conflicting, or driving innovation. And we could all do at being better at those things!

With the hustle and bustle of daily life, you might be thinking we have no time to consider our own or others emotions. I argue though, that if we understood emotions better, every reaction we have to situations and people could be more positive for ourselves, our long-term health, and the health of others! It generally just takes recognizing how we are feeling and making a decision to respond differently to how the child in us would like to respond. Our behaviours, patterns, beliefs about others and ourselves are all laid down when we are children. How many of us have actually grown up and out of our childhood ways of being and reacting?

Yes maybe that man who cursed and shouted from the car beside me that day could be called a rude, ignorant, angry person (I made a mistake in the lane but I didn’t deserve the level of abuse I got for it!), but no doubt his personality and how it was expressing itself was probably caused by his upbringing or the stress he is currently under in his life. And yes, it is difficult to be patient with people when they are treating you badly, but what we can do is take responsibility in how we react…can you?