Leadership Skills – Critical and Strategic Thinking Skills
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory, tactics without strategy is the sound before defeat.” —Sun Tsu
In today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing business world, leaders must balance meeting today’s expectations with maximizing tomorrow’s possibilities. By developing strategic thinking skills, leaders can continually develop and apply business insights for competitive advantage and drive business results. The better you develop strategic ideas, the more valuable you become to your organization.
brings you this section on strategic thinking and related tools to help you develop the qualities and skills of strategic thinkers. Learn the key elements and the strategic thinking process and leverage the suggested tools in your work environment. Develop your expertise in creative thinking, analyzing information, prioritizing your actions, and making compromises to improve your strategic thinking skills.
The four main areas of an organization that require special attention when we discuss change in an organizational setup are organizational structure, technology, work environment, and people. Some people call it process, system and people. Change in an organization includes adapting to change, controlling change, and implementing change.
The brainstorming technique was developed by Alex F. Osborn in 1957 and brainstorming means that a team of members generates a large amount of alternative fruitful ideas on a specific problem without any criticism and then evaluates each idea by based on its advantages and disadvantages. Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: viewing, exploring, modifying, and experimenting.
SCAMPER is an activity-based thinking process that can be achieved through cooperative learning. SCAMPER is an acronym that provides a structured way to help students think outside the box and improve their knowledge. It can be used in the organizational context as a creative problem-solving technique and as a toolkit for generating new ideas.
Sternberg in 2006, proposed the theory of cathexis and confluence focused on understanding creativity. According to investment theory, creativity requires a confluence of six distinct but interrelated resources called intellectual abilities, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment. He emphasizes that creativity is not about one thing, but about a system of things.
At different points in your professional career, it is useful to identify your core values. Values are the qualities considered the most important guiding principles that determine priorities in your life and greatly influence your career choices. Your career brings happiness when it aligns with the beliefs you hold about what is important and meaningful to you. Being aware of your values will help you develop a clearer idea of what is most important to you in life.
We define Lean as the systematic elimination of waste through a continuous effort to reduce inefficiency; the lean leader strives to create a more efficient organization. Lean leadership is a philosophy. It’s a consistent way of thinking and being in your leadership role. The goal of this approach is to train new leaders and help their team adopt a culture of continuous improvement. Find out what we mean by Lean leadership style and its principles.
Creative ideas don’t come just like that. There is a process to this. There are a number of creativity techniques to support idea generation, but the widely practiced ones are brainstorming and lateral thinking. Most innovations are not so much the product of sudden ideas as the result of a conscious process that often goes through several stages. The creative process can be divided into four stages of preparation, incubation, evaluation and implementation.
In its simplest sense, decision making is the act of choosing between two or more courses of action. Decision making is a key skill in the workplace and is especially important if you want to be an effective leader. When decisions need to be made, there are several steps to go through to arrive at a workable solution. Understand the meaning and importance of decision making and how to view it as a process.
Today’s dynamic business world demands that you make decisions that dramatically increase productivity and provide competitive advantage. But how do you know if a decision will benefit the organization? And how do you know that decisions are based on rational and statistical reasoning? Find out how to become a dynamic problem solver with the skills to make accurate decisions.