On Strategic Thinking

One of the tasks for our upcoming Team Mastery is to write our thoughts regarding strategic thinking. I'm about to start a new company in the field of coaching, and I think I want to have a blog on it's website with my friends where we can publish our thoughts. So now, although the company isn't up yet we at least have a blog. And to hit two birds with one stone I am going to start it and write on strategic thinking...

Strategy is a verb that answers question how can we achieve our vision. For example, as we are creating our sales strategy we first have our goal which is 50 customers visits before 22nd of January. Then we need to create a strategy how we can get to our goal. In this case I think the strategy is basically just making enough calls every week and searching our network for people to contact and connect to.

For me, strategy isn't something written in a stone. Rather it is continuous talk about how we should work to achieve our goals. Could we call it Action Strategy. It can be and should be changed in case needed as we work and observe what happens around us.

This is my simple way to define strategy when it comes to damn small entrepreneurs (1-10 people working in a company). But one may also look at strategy from a little different point of view. I just learned about it from a Finnish Entrepreneur Jari Sarasvuo from his book Huomiotalous - Diilin opetukset (freely translated - Notion Economy - insights from The Finnish version of TV-show Apprentice: Diili). He stresses a lot the story of a company. Too many companies today lack a story. A story that changes people both within and outside the company. He asks us to ask ourselves:

"What in our story signifies hope, feeling of control, love and calls for growth? How these promises change the reality both inside our company as well as outside world?

Ok, so this is the mission, right? He continues:

"If you and your friends in your company could create history, should you? If you could rewrite the rules of your field, why would you not do that?"

Let us all ask ourselves:

"How does the world become a better place, if our story becomes a reality?"

And we want to make the world a better place, I think. We need a strategy: how can we make this happen? Strategy is very much connected to leadership. A story is a strong tool for leaders. If you don't have the story, you are probably lost. Do people know about your story? Who wants to be part of our story of creating revolutions of teams and team learning?