Are You Strategic? 3 Defining Principles of Great Strategists

Until now, looking at someone’s job title is about the only way we’ve had to guess at whether or not someone is “strategic.” In many organizations, it is assumed that senior executives are strategic and lower-level employees are not. As you might imagine, strictly using someone’s title to determine their strategic ability is as accurate as using a Hollywood star’s popularity to determine their knowledge of political issues.

Leadership research by the American Management Association has shown that the most important competency for a leader to possess is the ability to develop strategy. Unfortunately, when researchers examined leaders at all levels in organizations, they found only 4% could be classified as strategists. According to the Institute of Directors in London, the wide gap between the importance of strategic thinking and the percentage of leaders that actually are strategic can be attributed to the fact that 90% of executives at the vice president level have had no training to become competent strategists.