A strategic thinking mindset is the ability to plan for the future, while drawing on the lessons of the past, and change the present capabilities of an organisation to build long-term resilience and value.
In times of uncertainty, strategic thinking is very important — and very challenging.
Strategic thinking can be challenging. One reason for this is that individuals confuse tactics with strategy. Strategy is about where you want to go — the destination. Tactics are the individual actions and steps to get you there. In times of complexity and with situations changing rapidly, it’s easy to go on autopilot — our brains go into the ‘fight or flight’ mode of survival, and we don’t properly assess the changing situation. We fire from the hip, focusing on internal operations that can be cut or reduced without linking those activities to the organisation’s strategic objectives. The pandemic has revealed that we need a more creative, strategic way of problem-solving and the ability to experiment with a range of scenarios for our organisations’ futures. This means taking time to think strategically, not reactively.
Focus on what appears odd, contradictory, or paradoxical.
The home, gardens, and studios of Henry Moore, a 20th-century British sculptor, provide fascinating insights into the mind of an artist. As finance professionals, we can learn from his ways of working. After all, strategy is an art form that involves creating vivid scenarios of possible futures.
Hoglands, his home and now a museum in the village of Perry Green, Hertfordshire, is full of colours, shapes, and textures that confront all the senses and emotions. As the guidebook to Hoglands describes,
What may at first seem an indiscriminate hoard of objects was in fact a carefully selected and displayed collection that moved between tables and shelves in the playful investigation of aesthetic relationships.8
This embodies what strategic thinking should be all about: ‘prolonged looking, chance and uncanny juxtapositions’ to stimulate exploration and investigation of different scenarios.9 Far too often, finance professionals stick to the familiar, relying on numbers and spreadsheets that only offer a one-dimensional view. Strategic thinking needs to encompass so much more.
On the grounds of the Henry Moore Foundation are scattered a network of different studios that the sculptor would retreat to depending on what he was working on. These include an etching studio, a maquettes studio for preliminary models, and a summer house in which he loved to draw. Originally, the summer house had been mounted on a turntable so it could be rotated to see different perspectives and have the best light at various points in the day.
When working on a large outdoor sculpture of reclining figures for New York’s Lincoln Center during a British winter, Moore asked a builder to design a studio that could simulate natural light and the effects of working outdoors:
I realised that a big sculpture intended to live outdoors permanently is better if it is actually made out-of-doors. Light out-of-doors comes of course from the sky, it is an all-around light, it is not the directional light which you get in a room with windows.10
When we think strategically and build scenarios, we need to experience the environments in which they are designed to sit. We also need to be able to describe them in such a way that they engage with all our senses.
Turn your strategic thinking into three-dimensional scenarios
Moore was one of the first artists to replace drawing with maquettes as the main vehicle for sculptural ideas. A maquette is usually a small preliminary model. Traditionally, artists had worked out ideas for sculptures on paper, producing hundreds of drawings exploring the subject from multiple viewpoints. Moore’s new maquette method enabled him to develop his ideas much faster and on a larger scale.
Visiting Hoglands demonstrates the value of the artist’s lens, which is one we should all employ when it comes to strategic thinking. To inhabit this perspective, start by asking questions like the following:
How do we build tactile experiences into our strategic thinking and decision-making?
How can we create experiences that explore contours, cavities, and external and internal forms in three dimensions to better engage our organisations and stakeholders in strategy?
Could a strategic scenario maquette studio for the finance function make us think differently?
Maybe art can help us find our strategic thinking mindset.
Author, entrepreneur, and CEO Margaret Heffernan notes that:
While an efficient mindset prizes predictability and continuality, an artist’s passion for exploration develops the capacity for change. Artists with staying power know that art isn’t about finding answers, defining solutions; it’s about better questions.11
