You have probably heard this before: “I need you to be more strategic.”
Maybe you’ve been told it in a performance review. Maybe a leader said it in the hallway. Or maybe you felt it yourself in the silence after presenting five options and making no clear recommendation.
The problem is, it doesn’t help.
Telling someone to be more strategic is like telling them to be more interesting. Technically, it’s direction. Practically, it’s useless.
Strategic thinking isn’t a personality trait that some people are born with and others aren’t. It’s a set of observable behaviours: prioritising what matters most, getting beneath symptoms to root causes, anticipating second-order effects, framing choices for decision-makers, and connecting day-to-day work to the business.
Those behaviours can be taught, coached and practised.
So the question isn’t “How do I become more strategic?” It’s “What does strategic thinking actually look like and how do I build those behaviours?”
That’s what this article is about. For you, and for the leaders you manage.
Strategic thinkers are more likely to be promoted into senior roles because they demonstrate the capacity to set direction, not just execute.
Strategic thinkers are also seen as higher-potential talent and are more often included in cross functional initiatives, expanding visibility and influence.
Strategic thinking used to be something you asked of your C-suite and left everyone else to execute. That divide is closing fast.
Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, the erosion of critical-thinking skills from heavy reliance on generative AI will push half of all global organisations to bring in "AI-free" assessments to check whether people can still reason independently. When a capability becomes scarce enough that organisations start testing for its absence. You know, it stops being a nice-to-have and something to nurture.
It's little wonder that strategic thinkers are more likely to be promoted into senior roles because they demonstrate the capacity to set direction, not just execute.
Strategic thinkers are also seen as higher-potential talent and are more often included in cross functional initiatives, expanding visibility and influence.
Leaders who aren't considered "strategic" tend to be more operationally focused. They are reactive and only able to look out six months ahead. This puts a cap on being promoted into more senior positions.
This is the shift I coach leaders through constantly - from busy and reactive to focused and strategic. I call it moving into the Achievement Zone: out of the fog of urgency, where every task feels equally important, and into the clarity of knowing which three things actually move the business. It means being able to look out three years old and a longer term horizon than the operational standard of six months.
When a leader says "be more strategic," they use it as more of a catch-all term. What they usually mean are one (or several) of the following, without ever naming which:
What it is: A strategic mindset requires being able to allocate the right amount of time and resources to the right things. That means confidently making trade-offs and tough calls on the fly, and holding steady focus on what needs to happen now to get you to the future you're after.
What it looks like when it's missing: Time goes to whatever's loudest, rather than whatever matters most.
Where it trips people up: Busy feels like productive. A full calendar looks important. Neither is proof that the right things are getting done.
What to do instead: Before the week starts, name the two or three outcomes that would make it a genuinely good week or a quarter for the business. These are usually tied to your KPIs. Everything else gets scheduled around those, not the other way round. It's not about doing what feels comfortable. Prioritising means doing what's hardest first.
The benefit: People stop confusing activity with progress. You are seen as someone who gets stuff done.
What it is: Commercial acumen means understanding your organisation's current context, both internally and externally. Internally, that's culture, purpose, processes, financials and products. Externally, it's market trends, customer behaviour, the competitive landscape and legislation. It's what lets you anticipate both opportunities and risks before they become obvious.
What it looks like when it's missing: Assumptions get made that miss a key piece of information. Problems get framed incorrectly, so the wrong solution gets applied. Real needs in other departments get overlooked entirely.
Where it trips people up: It's easy to stay fluent in your own patch and treat everything outside it: the budget, the market, another department's priorities, as someone else's job to track.
What to do instead: Identify what has changed in the market, customer environment, financial position or another department. Name who will be affected by your next decision, not after.
The benefit: Fewer decisions that need to be quietly undone six months later which costs far more than the extra five minutes of thinking up front.
What it is: Systems awareness is being able to connect your project, plan or piece of work to the wider business. This means being able to explain why it matters in the terms leadership actually cares about: revenue, retention, or whatever else is genuinely top of their list.
What it looks like when it's missing: A presentation goes to leadership about a new solution or strategy and it doesn't land. Not because the solution's weak, but because leadership doesn't feel consulted or feel that the solution was 'commercial'. They're more likely to back an idea from someone else who covers what they actually want to hear: a clear ROI, what's missing, the consequences of not acting and a genuine range of options.
Where it trips people up: Under pressure, attention narrows to the immediate fix and to what matters most personally. Consequences elsewhere aren't visible yet, so they don't feel real.
What to do instead: Find out what's genuinely the top priority for the person or department you're presenting to (not what you assume it is), then build your case around that. Include ROI, the risk of inaction. the potential upside and real options laid out plainly. Be open to pushback and further dialogue.
The benefit: Ideas get backed instead of stalled. Leadership says yes because the case has already been made in the terms that matter to them.
What it is: Testing assumptions means treating what you believe to be true as a guess worth checking, not a fact to build on. An assumption isn't evidence.
What it looks like when it's missing: A plan gets built on "everyone knows the market wants X" or "this always works." But nobody checks whether that's still true.
Where it trips people up: An assumption that worked before starts to feel like a fact, instead of a guess that's due for a re-check. Known as second-order thinking: this a mental habit that solves today's problem while creating three more problems next month.
What to do instead: Before a major decision, to avoid assumptions ask yourself, "Why do I believe this is true? This prompts you to reflect on the origin of your belief and the evidence supporting it. Ask, “What happens now?” Then ask, “And then what?” to surface hidden problems and ripple effects before you commit.
The benefit: Strategies often unravel because the underlying assumptions were not tested before anyone committed to them. Strategic thinkers create cultures where assumptions are tested and learning is continuous, which improves adaptability in volatile markets.
What it is: No one sees their own blind spots. That's what makes them blind spots (unless you work with an executive coach to help you see them). Strategic thinkers deliberately build a small network of people who will challenge their thinking and expand their perspective, not to seek permission, but to catch what they genuinely can't see alone.
What it looks like when it's missing: A leader works through a decision solo and shares it only once it's fully formed, then can't work out why it meets resistance.
Where it trips people up: Deciding alone feels faster. Seeking out an opposing view feels like it slows things down or that you haven't worked it all out yet.
What to do instead: Before it's locked in, take the decision to one person likely to disagree with you. Especially if it affects other teams. Ask them to poke holes in it.
The benefit: Better decisions and buy-in you don't have to go back and fight for later.
"Just be more strategic” sounds like a plausible explanation for why someone isn’t hitting the mark. But it isn’t useful feedback unless they know what you actually want them to do differently.
I’ve coached countless ambitious managers who were given exactly this feedback. Most didn’t become more strategic. They went into a spin trying to work out what their leader meant.
And interestingly, I’ve often had to interview the people around them to figure it out. Usually, the leader isn’t entirely sure themselves.
When you leave “strategic” undefined, you don’t create strategic thinkers. You create a team of people guessing at the definition. Often, by copying whatever the last person who used the word seemed to mean. And that may be completely different from what you intended.
The cost of that ambiguity compounds.
It shows up in performance conversations that go nowhere because nobody agreed on the behaviour that needed to change. In good people having to be demoted because they don't know how to apply strategic thinking to their work. And in hours spent revisiting decisions that clearer thinking, earlier, could have prevented.
If people have to guess what “strategic” means, you’ve made the development problem harder than it needs to be.
Strategic thinking is no longer a C-suite luxury. It's becoming a baseline expectation for leaders. The good news is that it was never really about being a different kind of person. It's five behaviours, each one specific enough to name, coach, and practise. Pick one. Practise it this week. That's a faster path to "strategic" than any amount of being told to be more of it.
If you're seeing this gap across your leadership team - not just one person, but a pattern of managers, that's precisely the shift the Tribe of Trusted Leaders is built to create. It's how CEOs move a whole layer of management from busy and reactive into the Achievement Zone, together. 85% of graduates are deemed promotion-ready by the end of it.
What does it actually mean to be a strategic thinker? It means consistently practising a specific set of behaviours. Prioritising the few things that matter most, tracing problems to their root cause, thinking through second-order consequences, framing recommendations clearly for decision-makers, and connecting daily work to business outcomes. It's a practice, not a personality type.
Is strategic thinking something you're born with, or can it be learned? It can be learned. Research across more than 20,000 executives found the capabilities behind strategic leadership — anticipating, challenging, interpreting, deciding, aligning, and learning — are teachable skills, not fixed traits. Harvard Business Review — Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills (Schoemaker, Krupp, Howland — Wharton/Decision Strategies International research, 20,000+ executives)
What's the difference between strategic thinking and operational thinking? Operational thinking asks "how do I get this done well?" Strategic thinking asks "is this the right thing to be doing, and what happens next if we do it?" Strong leaders need both, but most people default to operational thinking under pressure because it feels more immediately productive.
Why is "be more strategic" bad feedback? Because it names a destination without a direction. It's not specific enough to act on. Effective feedback names the exact behaviour missing. For example, not prioritising, not framing recommendations clearly, or not connecting work to business impact, so the person knows precisely what to change.
How do I build strategic thinking in my leadership team, not just myself? Start by naming which of the five behaviours is actually missing for each person, rather than defaulting to the generic phrase. Give them a live example from their own work, and ask them to explain what "strategic" would look like in their next decision. This is also exactly the gap structured leadership development is built to close.