Strategic thinking is strange for most people. We hear the words without a clue what they mean.
And why should we?
For many, strategic thinking sounds like psychobabble at best, one more way to control clinical medicine.
Many doctors go into leadership out of frustration. They take a pay cut to trade a day in clinic for the boardroom. Tired of reactive, failing organizations, they take the lead to refocus on things that matter.
Organizations do not fail because they aim at the wrong target. They fail because they do not know how to aim. They point guns they have never used at targets they cannot define. God help anyone who questions their efforts.
What is Strategic Thinking?
Intention is not strategy. Intention means you feel deeply and act on purpose. You burst with ideas, but none of this is strategic.
Three words capture the concept: thought, action, context. Strategic thinking means we reflect on what we want to achieve within a particular context.
From the outside, strategic thinking looks athletic: gritted teeth, muscular, focussed.
Strategic Thinking in 4 Simple Steps
A. What can you do that no one else can do better?
Doctors know what nurses do better. Patients suffer from many things, but physicians only offer one thing: medicine. Doctors avoid social work and spiritual care, not because they do not matter, but because other people do them better.
B. What must be done?
In the public policy shopping mall, there is only one health policy candy store. It sells 3,000 different candies, each one delicious.
Strategic thinking means you must only pick three.
If you are a medical association, what three policy issues impact most of your doctors and patients?
Can you build a unifying campaign?
Will you stick with it until you achieve your goal (it may take years)?
C. Why are you the one to do it?
Just because you can does not mean you should.
Perhaps you can advocate for kids with autism. You might be an expert. But one mom on the morning news can accomplish more than a whole committee of experts. This does not mean you must drop autism. Just know how you fit, if at all.
D. How will you know you did it?
Take a look at other professions.
Nurse practitioners now admit patients. Pharmacists prescribe and administer vaccines. These both came from thoughtful, focussed strategy. They did not just happen to ’save money’ or ‘modernize healthcare’.
Successful strategy delivers real outcomes, not a whirl of furious activity.
5 Common Traps
A. It’s All About You
We can turn everything into a medical issue.
People get sick without shelter; houses offer shelter; therefore, doctors need to advocate for housing!
Plankton produces 80% of the earth’s oxygen; patients need oxygen; therefore, doctors need to save the plankton!
If you are a house builder, then you should focus on building houses. Strategy directs how you go about it.
If you do not build houses and have no interest in learning, then for goodness sake do not try to build one. Just because people need houses does not mean you are the best one to advocate for them.
B. Natural Distraction
A hurricane hits. Everyone lends a hand. You should too, especially at the start.
But be careful.
Even natural disasters offer irresistible crises that organizations dare not waste. The Sierra Club might jump to advertise their cause when a storm proves the warrant of their well-known alarm.
You may love the Sierra Club. But it must be clear whether you are helping the disaster or the Club.
C. Social Distraction
Social disasters look unexpected, but they come with well-organized and funded lobby groups in tow.
This is not a bad thing.
A Poppy Shopper’s Association forms around the interests of poppy shoppers. When someone runs off with the poppy box (as they do every November), the PSA is best prepared to denounce it.
But what if poppy theft becomes the public’s shiny object of the hour? What if it creates a movement that lasts for weeks and covers the front page of every newspaper?
Go back to first principles: thought, action, context.
Have you thought deeply about the specific action you want to achieve within this context?
Are you just posturing to look fashionable?
Review the four steps then apply them:
How might you approach this issue in a strategic fashion?
What will you stop doing in order to do this new work?
D. Hijacked Strategy
People can tell when organizations take a knee for popular issues they know nothing about.
When plumbers wear ribbons for autism, people smile and cheer the plumbers’ civic sensitivity. But when plumbers write articles in their trade journals about autism and pay lip service at every opportunity, they look condescending, over-confident, or simply confused.
Distraction kills strategy. You cannot stop in the middle of a race to pledge allegiance to the Toronto Star’s flag of the day. If you fall for the Star’s flag, you promote the Star’s strategy, not your own.
Successful strategy convinces others to support your design.
You must promote your own strategy or someone else’s. When you promote someone else’s issues, they get work for free, and your members pay for it. Advertisers call it earned media. Why pay for ads if the media will do it for free as news?
E. Clueless Strategy
Words always mattered, but they matter more now that definitions change so often. The latest, coolest terms carry heavy political baggage.
In the 1970s and 80s, we wanted to hang loose, relax, or trust your feelings. These ideas came from German philosophy, not Rock and Roll.
Today, people promote their “lived experience.” What could be more rational than to admit the truth of others’ experience and your relative ignorance of the same?
Again, “lived experience” comes from the field of qualitative research, phenomenology, and (you guessed it) German philosophy.
You might love Edmund Husserl et al. I happen to think phenomenology mirrors much of what we do in medicine. It offers an interesting field of study. But it is not self-evidently true. Oprah’s advise to “Speak your truth” does not close debate.
Sexy modern terms always package a larger body of thought. You either know it or promote it.
Simple But Hard
These steps are simple, but they are not easy. Most people ignore them and follow their hearts instead. Then they puzzle at why they flounder in irrelevance, while other organizations get ahead.
Associations spend millions of donated dollars. Make them show us they understand strategic thinking and the common traps that ruin strategy. If you happen to lead one of these organizations, please make sure your are not promoting someone else’s strategy!
Photo credit: modified from SB Nation
A strategy is a plan to achieve a certain goal.
Thinking is a cognitive process that occurs within one’s grey matter that tries to make sense of the world , to interpret it, so that the goal can be achieved.
Having grown up with chess, the goal is victory.
A certain humility is required, “ how might I be wrong”, I presume that surgeons, for all their skill, map out in their minds the future consequences of every movement of their scalpel ( sometimes arteries and nerves are not where Gray’s Anatomy says they are)….and that “ auld enemy” blood can make its unexpected appearance at any time.
In chess one has to disguise one’s strategy since the opposition wants to prevent you from achieving your goals and has his/ hers own goals….habits can be fatal.
I love reading the Chinese martial arts strategies , the Bing- fa ( basically there are 36) the ancient Chinese , and the moderns for that matter, don’t distinguish between wartime and times of peace.
Strategy has to be separated from tactics…the long term goal versus the immediate actions and responses…in chess one can make a tactical move, the immediate sacrifice of a piece , to gain the advantage and ultimate victory.
Bringing politics into the picture.. Xi is running rings around Justin and will over Biden , Trump was too unpredictable, happily from his perspective he will be gone in a few months.
Bringing our own representative organizations into the conversation, one has the sense that the goal is to become vassal organizations with servitude for the memberships… to genuflect and kow tow to the government for eternity, the well being of the membership be damned.
Well said, Andris.
I didn’t expect you to have much to say about tactics vs strategy and the need for operational humility. But once again, I am humbled by your knowledge! Fantastic.
Good to see you weave in the Chinese. It reminds me of the famous line by premier Zhou Enlai from the 1970s. When asked what he thought about the impact of the French Revolution from the 1790s, he said, “Too early to tell.”
We are consumed by the immediate. Old marxists might have said it is due to our commodity fetishism. 🙂 Regardless of the cause, we can guarantee no meaningful outcomes if we cannot avoid shiny objects.
Thanks again for reading and posting a comment!
Cheers
Interesting article Shawn, and very thoughtful comments.
You mention Premier Zhou’s comment about being patient about the impact of the French revolution.
By the same token, socialism, particularly Bundism, is 100 years younger and yet many of its founding principles remain ahead of modern times. It is too early to call socialism an out-dated philosophy.
Great to hear from you, Hal!
I always find your comments about socialism stimulating and thoughtful. I find much to like about the anarcho-socialists and the Christian-socialists. The Leninist, Stalinist, and Socialist German Workers Party not so much. It all depends how we define socialism. If it just means helping each other within a socio-cultural rubric of traditional values which bind together a people toward a common goal while acknowledging the unique value of individuals, then yes, I love the idea. But too often, socialism becomes a cold Benthamism which make ‘bold political choices’ for the ‘greater good of all.’
No doubt, the practical communism of Catholic monasteries has much going for it, but it doesn’t seem to work so well for a whole society.
Again, I simply love to hear from you. Seriously, your generosity of spirit is your most powerful tool in promoting your ideas about socialism. I hope you never lose sight of that very attractive quality.
Be safe and well,
Shawn
And please excuse my iPhone’s spelling of French. I still miss my blackberry 2 years on…
Fixed!
Yes, iPhones….those damned capitalists giving us things we did not need! 😀
Cheers