Strategic Thinking: Are You Running Your Business or Just Keeping It Running?
Strategic thinking gives you the space to step outside the daily running of your business, assess where you are going and decide what deserves your attention next. Without that space, you can have an extremely productive week while making surprisingly little progress on the bigger decisions that shape your business.
I know, because last week I did exactly that.
I scheduled social media posts, sent individual workshop invitations, promoted events, recorded podcast episodes, sorted PBN admin, travelled to Redruth to speak, worked on YouTube and sold four workshop tickets. My diary described it as a productive week, and it was.
Then I sat down to do my Sunday review.
The irony hit me. I had just recorded an entire Routine Reset about strategic thinking, while spending most of my own week doing the day-to-day work I had been talking about escaping.
Your business will only ever be as healthy as you. And part of your Intellectual Health is giving your brain the space to do more than process information and complete tasks.
It needs time to think.
What is strategic thinking in business?
Strategic thinking is the practice of stepping outside your immediate workload to consider where your business is going, what is working, what needs to change and which decisions will move you forward.
There is good reason to make room for it. A meta-analysis of 26 studies found a positive relationship between strategic planning and business performance.¹ A separate meta-analysis focusing specifically on small firms also found a positive and significant overall relationship between formal strategic planning and financial performance.²
Strategic thinking does not have to mean disappearing for a three-day planning retreat with a flipchart and a five-year plan.
For a solopreneur, it can start with 30 protected minutes each week. The greater difficulty is that those 30 minutes rarely look urgent.
Why does strategic thinking get squeezed out?
Michael E. Gerber describes three roles in The E-Myth Revisited: the Technician doing the work, the Manager organising it and the Entrepreneur looking towards the future.³
That distinction has stayed with me because I know exactly where I can get stuck. I have CEO review sheets, I have KPIs, I have scheduling templates and I understand perfectly well that I need time to work on my business.
And still the doing takes over.
If you run your business largely on your own, you undoubtedly recognise this. There is always something tangible waiting to be done. A client needs a response, an invoice needs sending, content needs creating, something needs fixing and so on.
Each task can be completely legitimate.
The problem appears when completing those tasks leaves no space to ask whether they are still the right tasks. Research into attention residue adds another dimension. Sophie Leroy's experiments found that when people switch between tasks, particularly when leaving work unfinished, some attention can remain attached to the previous task and subsequent performance can suffer.⁴
If your entire working day consists of reacting, switching and completing, where does your deeper thinking happen?
Can being productive actually hide a strategic problem?
Yes, and I think this is why the problem is so easy to miss.
A bad week gives you signals when things go wrong or deadlines are missed. You immediately know something needs attention. A busy, productive week gives you plenty of evidence that things are working, because you finish tasks, you solve problems, your customers are happy and money is coming in.
Nothing necessarily feels wrong. And that is exactly when it is worth asking whether your activity is taking you where you actually want to go.
Pricing can remain unchanged because reviewing it requires thought. Positioning can stay vague because clarifying it needs headspace. An opportunity can pass because the decision keeps being deferred. You can continue delivering something because it has always been part of the business, without stopping to ask whether it still deserves to be.
Busyness can keep a business moving. - Strategic thinking determines the direction.
Why is strategic thinking part of Intellectual Health?
Within my T.E.M.P.L.E. Method™, Intellectual Health covers how you use and look after your thinking capacity.
We often associate intellectual development with learning. You read books, attend webinars, listen to podcasts, take courses and gather information. But information has limited value if you never create enough space to process and apply it.
Strategic thinking is where you connect what you know with where you are going. It allows you to spot patterns, question assumptions, solve problems and turn learning into decisions. For a business owner, that makes thinking capacity part of your business infrastructure.
Your strategy still depends on the brain creating it.
How can you make strategic thinking a routine?
Start with a regular CEO review.
Protect 30 minutes in your diary, ideally at the same time each week. During that time, step away from the operational work and ask yourself four questions:
- What moved forward this week?
- What did not, and why?
- What decision has been waiting too long?
- What single thing would make the biggest difference next week?
These questions are deliberately simple. The value comes from repeatedly creating the space to answer them.
My own review last Sunday showed me plenty of wins: four workshop tickets sold, the podcast is now successfully in-house and published, a presentation delivered and the networking administration completed. It also showed me what remained unfinished and what needed to become a priority next.
That is the difference between looking at what you did and thinking about what it means.
You can then connect your weekly review to the longer horizon:
- What am I building towards?
- What decisions am I continuing to defer?
- Does the work filling my diary support where I say I want to go?
Write your answers down. Get them out of your head and somewhere you can see them.
When should you start making CEO time?
This week.
You do not need to wait until you have employees, a bigger turnover or fewer demands on your time before you start thinking like the person directing the business.
Put 30 minutes in your diary and protect it. Because if you are constantly doing the work, somebody still needs to stop occasionally and decide whether it is the right work. And in your business, that somebody is probably you.
If this article has made you wonder whether strategic thinking is the only thing being quietly squeezed out of your working week, take my free Hidden Bottleneck Quiz. Twelve short questions will help you identify what may be having the greatest impact on your energy, focus and professional performance, and where to start.
Please make time to think strategically. The business you are building depends on it.
And remember, a healthier you makes a wealthier you.
References
1. Miller, C. C. & Cardinal, L. B. (1994). Strategic Planning and Firm Performance: A Synthesis of More Than Two Decades of Research. Academy of Management Journal, 37(6), 1649-1665. Academy of Management Journal
2. Schwenk, C. R. & Shrader, C. B. (1993). Effects of Formal Strategic Planning on Financial Performance in Small Firms: A Meta-Analysis. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 17(3), 53-64. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
3. Gerber, M. E. (1995). The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. HarperBusiness.
4. Leroy, S. (2009). Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168-181. DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002. ScienceDirect research record