Can thinking strategically help you achieve your goals in 2024?

There’s lots of content doing the rounds at the moment about setting goals for the year ahead and creating a better version of yourself. 

While the thought of self-improvement can be a little exhausting, the reality is that the best changes to make are sustainable. 

Moving from being reactive to approaching challenges with a strategic lens requires a relatively small shift to see big results in our field.

But how do you become a strategic thinker?

Here are some tips that can help you make the change. 

Set a goal.

If you don’t have something in mind that you want to achieve, it’s hard to achieve it. Before tackling a problem, step back and define what you are trying to do.

It also pays to make sure your goals are SMART, making them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. 

This article has some great tips on how you can do just that. 

Think about who can help you achieve your goal.

Few problems can be solved by one person alone. Identifying who can help you reach your goal will get you one step closer to what you want. 

As a strategic thinker, you shouldn’t think about whose job it is to solve your problem; instead, think about who can help you move forward. 

For example, if you struggle to get information from a particular team, don’t call their manager and tell them you’re frustrated; maybe try to chat with someone who works with them regularly. You could ask them how they work with the team to deliver results. 

This blog post from a while back has some other tips for building relationships at work. 

Don’t keep banging your head against a wall.

Challenges at work usually don’t happen just once. If you get frustrated by the same thing over and over, take a step back and think about why it’s not working.

Some good prompts to help you along your way:

• Where are things going wrong? 

• Do other team members think it’s the same issue as you?

• Has there ever been a time when things went well? What was different?

If it’s a more complex challenge, you might want to do a root cause analysis.