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How to Think Strategically: Sharpen Your Mind. Develop Your Competency. Contribute to Success.
How to Think Strategically is the ideal primer for those who want to develop their mental acumen and make strategic impact. This book will help you understand what it means to “be strategic” and how to craft strategy that is effective, powerful, and clever. A competent strategic thinker tolerates ambiguity, notices weak signals, defines the core challenge facing the organization, and designs effective responses with a winning strategic logic.
How to Think Strategically provides numerous real-world examples of individual strategic thinkers in action describing how they constructed a winning strategic logic. Through these examples, you'll learn useful lessons that can be applied in any organization and in your personal life. This book will show you how to:
Internalize the 20 microskills of strategic thinking
Develop your personal brand as a competent strategic thinker
Pose high-quality questions that spark strategic insights
Write a concise one-page statement strategy, with five essential concepts that will help you distinguish effective strategy from a list of goals
Design strategy that is clever and powerful
Recognize and mitigate blind spots and decision traps
Distinguish strategic thinking from operational thinking and appropriately apply each
Overcome the excuse of “I'm too busy to be strategic"
Recognize and exploit the four X-factors of strategic thinking: Drive, Insight, Chance, and Emergence
Practice extra-ordinary leadership to confront issues and leap into an unknown future
Improve conversations with other strategists
The author brings a unique perspective that reflects years of experience as a corporate manager, educator, strategy consultant, facilitator, executive leadership coach, and board member. He writes with an engaging style that unpacks the broader concepts into easy-to-remember nuggets. Anyone can improve their strategic thinking if they know where to focus their attention. This book will be an indispensable guide for anyone interested in developing their personal brand.
How to Think Strategically provides numerous real-world examples of individual strategic thinkers in action describing how they constructed a winning strategic logic. Through these examples, you'll learn useful lessons that can be applied in any organization and in your personal life. This book will show you how to:
Internalize the 20 microskills of strategic thinking
Develop your personal brand as a competent strategic thinker
Pose high-quality questions that spark strategic insights
Write a concise one-page statement strategy, with five essential concepts that will help you distinguish effective strategy from a list of goals
Design strategy that is clever and powerful
Recognize and mitigate blind spots and decision traps
Distinguish strategic thinking from operational thinking and appropriately apply each
Overcome the excuse of “I'm too busy to be strategic"
Recognize and exploit the four X-factors of strategic thinking: Drive, Insight, Chance, and Emergence
Practice extra-ordinary leadership to confront issues and leap into an unknown future
Improve conversations with other strategists
The author brings a unique perspective that reflects years of experience as a corporate manager, educator, strategy consultant, facilitator, executive leadership coach, and board member. He writes with an engaging style that unpacks the broader concepts into easy-to-remember nuggets. Anyone can improve their strategic thinking if they know where to focus their attention. This book will be an indispensable guide for anyone interested in developing their personal brand.
- GenresLeadershipBusiness
304 pages, Paperback
First published July 9, 2019
66 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 23, 2019
Strategy is a relationship among ends, ways, and means (connecting the dots).
Strategy involves making bets.
“Insights are the secret sauce of strategy. An insight is a person’s realization of a new and better explanation of the situation. The mind realizes insights through three pathways: finding connections, exploring contradictions, and using creative desperation.”
Ambiguity is a precursor to great strategy.
A person’s strategic perspective is grounded in their personality, life experiences, and present point of view. “One person’s nonsense is another person’s common sense.”
Better discourse can lead to better strategy.
“Ordinary leadership involves ‘perfecting the known,’ whereas the chief task of extraordinary leadership is ‘imperfectly seizing the unknown.’”
The book discusses 12 micro-skills of strategic thinking, none of which are too surprising.
Curiosity sparks insight for forward thinking. Strategic thinkers question everything and want to know how things work and how they can be made better. They find people with diverse and opposing views.
Storytelling makes sense of ambiguity, and includes: characters, tensions, actions, and resolutions.
Testing your inclinations and continuously improving your understanding via reflection is important.
Crafting a strategy has 3 phases: the fuzzy front-end, the structured back-end and the programming of strategy. On the front-end, one must notice patterns, trends, coincidences, curiosities, and anomalies.
Ask short and better questions.
Reach clarity by keeping an open mind and sense of the big picture.
Focus on learning (rather than knowing). Be comfortable with the uncomfortable unknown.
Be open to discovery, open to emergence.
“Competent strategic thinkers are exceptions.”
“Prevailing culture often discourages deviation from the norm.” As the saying goes - The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
Examples in the book include (all stories of which I’ve heard about before in many other books):
Moneyball and Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s.
IBM’s Louis Gerstner Jr.
Christopher Columbus
Strategy involves making bets.
“Insights are the secret sauce of strategy. An insight is a person’s realization of a new and better explanation of the situation. The mind realizes insights through three pathways: finding connections, exploring contradictions, and using creative desperation.”
Ambiguity is a precursor to great strategy.
A person’s strategic perspective is grounded in their personality, life experiences, and present point of view. “One person’s nonsense is another person’s common sense.”
Better discourse can lead to better strategy.
“Ordinary leadership involves ‘perfecting the known,’ whereas the chief task of extraordinary leadership is ‘imperfectly seizing the unknown.’”
The book discusses 12 micro-skills of strategic thinking, none of which are too surprising.
Curiosity sparks insight for forward thinking. Strategic thinkers question everything and want to know how things work and how they can be made better. They find people with diverse and opposing views.
Storytelling makes sense of ambiguity, and includes: characters, tensions, actions, and resolutions.
Testing your inclinations and continuously improving your understanding via reflection is important.
Crafting a strategy has 3 phases: the fuzzy front-end, the structured back-end and the programming of strategy. On the front-end, one must notice patterns, trends, coincidences, curiosities, and anomalies.
Ask short and better questions.
Reach clarity by keeping an open mind and sense of the big picture.
Focus on learning (rather than knowing). Be comfortable with the uncomfortable unknown.
Be open to discovery, open to emergence.
“Competent strategic thinkers are exceptions.”
“Prevailing culture often discourages deviation from the norm.” As the saying goes - The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
Examples in the book include (all stories of which I’ve heard about before in many other books):
Moneyball and Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s.
IBM’s Louis Gerstner Jr.
Christopher Columbus
July 28, 2020
This is a MUST read. Every single page has a tool, technique, or idea that can be utilized in a current business situation.
More than the brilliant ideas that are explained in both simple and complex terms so that as a learner you both understand them and can apply them to complex business situations, it is in the details of this book that makes all the difference.
Throughout the book Greg uses female pronouns. As a woman in business who reads a lot of business related articles and books, the default is male. In his introduction he writes, “I will use the pronoun she throughout the book as a convention when referring to the individual. Although there are mostly males in my examples, I sincerely believe that women are fully capable of achieving excellence in strategic thinking.” (pg. XV). I firmly believe that part of the reason Greg is so successful is that he recognizes detail in the bigger picture. This is just one example of thoughtful choices and consideration in the story telling of strategy used in this book.
Often we read about strategy as an event in time that is then executed. However, Greg explains and uses case examples throughout this book to demonstrate that strategic thinking is a habit that reflects our current perspective. It is the narrative around this perspective that governs how we think about and execute strategy. In order to disrupt your perspective and current notions about strategy, this is a must read.
Buy this book, read it, and keep it close. It is one of those books that on a Sunday evening as you prepare for the week, you read even just a couple of sentences because at the same time it inspires, it also informs best practices for any individual, across industries.
More than the brilliant ideas that are explained in both simple and complex terms so that as a learner you both understand them and can apply them to complex business situations, it is in the details of this book that makes all the difference.
Throughout the book Greg uses female pronouns. As a woman in business who reads a lot of business related articles and books, the default is male. In his introduction he writes, “I will use the pronoun she throughout the book as a convention when referring to the individual. Although there are mostly males in my examples, I sincerely believe that women are fully capable of achieving excellence in strategic thinking.” (pg. XV). I firmly believe that part of the reason Greg is so successful is that he recognizes detail in the bigger picture. This is just one example of thoughtful choices and consideration in the story telling of strategy used in this book.
Often we read about strategy as an event in time that is then executed. However, Greg explains and uses case examples throughout this book to demonstrate that strategic thinking is a habit that reflects our current perspective. It is the narrative around this perspective that governs how we think about and execute strategy. In order to disrupt your perspective and current notions about strategy, this is a must read.
Buy this book, read it, and keep it close. It is one of those books that on a Sunday evening as you prepare for the week, you read even just a couple of sentences because at the same time it inspires, it also informs best practices for any individual, across industries.
November 11, 2023
a comprehensive review book on different schools and perspectives of strategy. It discusses about what strategy means and ways to achieve it.
June 20, 2025
Well, this book was a bit much. If you're not completely focused, you will miss things. There is a lot happening in this book & some of it didn't really make sense, or I just couldn't relate to it. Some may find it helpful, but I didn't really care for it. So maybe that's why my mind would wander while reading it. I imagine there are better books to read that are easier to relate to & can get informed & make some strategic moves.
October 7, 2020
A poorly written and edited book - sentecnes are very incoherent and fraught with typos. The ideas are generic at best and very unfocused. It wasn't a worthwhile read at all.
December 9, 2019
This is truly a well written "How to" manual. I have read a lot of books on self improvement, business, and even strategy. This is the first that goes beyond concept and into practical application. Greg Githens not only provides concise definition, but steps and practice to enable everyone with tools to become a strategic thinker. He posits that not just the top levels of the organization should be those that think strategically, but everyone within an organization not only has the ability but the opportunity to become a strategic thinker.
I will add this book to the handful of books I go back an read regularly, to continue to increase my proficiency at becoming a strategic thinker. Additionally, I have bought copies for some of my directors to read too!
I will add this book to the handful of books I go back an read regularly, to continue to increase my proficiency at becoming a strategic thinker. Additionally, I have bought copies for some of my directors to read too!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews