Becoming More Strategic

Being strategic makes your intent more potent and your actions more powerful. But, how do you become more strategic in your orientation? It requires several steps and many new habits. But the first step is around learning about the heart of the matter in every situation. The video explains the details.
The link to the podcast mentioned in the video is: http://ankushchopra.com/becoming-a-strategic-thinker-podcast-s2-e3/

Transcript

Hi, I am Ankush Chopra.

Let’s talk about becoming more strategic in your orientation.

Have you seen situations when someone is taking massive action but cannot move the needle?Let me give you an example:

The NASA Problem

During the first moon landing mission, NASA scientists were working on a simulated moon landing. Their simulations showed a disturbing fact.

In most simulations, the external light bulb of the shuttle would break with the impact of landing. So the scientists started working on an unbreakable glass that would not break with impact. But no matter how much they worked they couldn’t build it.

An Intern Arrives

Then a new intern joined the team. And his first reaction to this problem was surprising. He asked why do you need a glass covering. The bulb needs such a cover on the earth because of oxygen in the air. Since there is no oxygen on the moon, you don’t need any glass covering to make the bulb work. Problem solved!

What Is The Issue?

This was an example of people working on the wrong goal. And this goes to the heart of being strategic. When you work on the core issue of a situation, your efforts produce significant results. But when you work on the wrong issue, you produce no results.

Becoming More Strategic

It is like pressing the right light switch to turn on the lights. When you press the wrong switches, no matter how diligently you work, the light will not turn on.

So the first step in being more strategic is by believing that there is a core issue in every situation that holds the key to the turnaround of that situation. The second step is identifying that core issue.

We sometimes get stuck solving the wrong problem because we go down the wrong rabbit hole and then keep digging there.

What you need in such a situation is reframing of the problem as the NASA intern did.

But when looking at a situation for the first time, you need to get eh core of the problem by analyzing the dominant goals  That is secret to identifying the core issue.

The Podcast

I discuss this in a lot more detail in my podcast episode linked below. I invite you to that conversation. See you there.