Thinking about strategy or strategic thinking is the fundamental source of competitive advantage or differentiation. Every winning strategy begins first in the mind of a leader or group of leaders and is refined into a set of winning rules that sets its organization apart from others in its industry, field or sector.
Strategic thinking goes beyond looking at what is — it involves imagining what could be by or shifting to a future oriented perspective of the market or environment. It could be a unique take on the future, or a capacity to imagine new answers to old challenges. Strategic thinking is the foundation to effective strategic planning and strategy formulation.
As a discipline, strategic thinking helps with ensuring leadership develops and decides on insightful strategies and execution that help their teams foster and facilitate differentiation that customers, stakeholders and constituents value.
UCG supports you in fostering strategic ideation and decisioning among leadership by applying the right method frameworks and processes for your unique situation. Some will be well known and widely accepted and others will veer from the conventional path but all will be appropriate.
We draw on almost two decades of experience skillfully helping leaders frame challenges from the varying perspectives of their stakeholders to consider strategic alternatives or scenarios and their advantages: