How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

6. Strategic Thinking Gives You Influence with Others
One executive confided in another: “Our company has a short range plan and
a long range plan. Our short range plan is to stay afloat long enough to make it to
our long range plan.” That’s hardly a strategy, yet that’s the position where some
business leaders put themselves. There’s more than one problem with neglecting
strategic thinking in that way. Not only does it fail to build the business, but it
also loses the respect of everyone involved with the business.
The one with the plan is the one with the power. It doesn’t matter in what kind
of activity you’re involved. Employees want to follow the business leader with a
good business plan. Volunteers want to join the pastor with a good ministry plan.
Children want to be with the adult who has the well-thought-out vacation plan. If
you practice strategic thinking, others will listen to you and they will want to
follow you. If you possess a position of leadership in an organization, strategic
thinking is essential.

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HOW TO RELEASE THE POWER OFSTRATEGIC THINKING
To become a better strategic thinker able to formulate and implement plans
that will achieve the desired objective, take the following guidelines to heart:

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1. Break Down the Issue
The first step in strategic thinking is to break down an issue into smaller, more
manageable parts so that you can focus on them more effectively. How you do it
is not as important as just doing it. You might break an issue down by function.
That’s what automotive innovator Henry Ford did when he created the assembly
line, and that’s why he said, “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into
small jobs.”
How you break down an issue is up to you, whether it’s by function,
timetable, responsibility, purpose, or some other method. The point is that you
need to break it down. Only one person in a million can juggle the whole thing
in his head and think strategically to create solid, viable plans.

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