May Busch* says that in an era of rapid change in the workplace, thinking strategically has never been more important.
If you’re like most people, you’ve got more things to do than there are hours in a day.
Are you familiar with that ‘hamster wheel’ too?
By the time you get the essential and urgent tasks done, it’s late and you’re exhausted.
It is hardly the moment for stepping back and thinking strategically about the bigger picture of your career.
However, being too busy to think beyond the day-to-day will ultimately keep you from advancing in your career.
Think of it as the ‘fast food’ approach to work — dealing with what’s conveniently right in front of you rather than taking the time to plan ahead for a nourishing meal.
This approach taken to extremes will hurt your career just as eating mostly fast food harms your health longer term.
Like the time my colleague was so busy working on an acquisition analysis, he failed to notice that the target company had been taken over by someone else.
Then there was the team member who clung to being the ‘go-to person’ in a specific technical area for too long and became pigeon-holed as she watched her peers get promoted ahead of her.
So how do you prevent this from happening to you?
Now is the time to pause and look up from the daily grind.
Take a hard look at the things on your to-do list that you keep putting off until later when you’ll have more time.
Or maybe they don’t make it onto the list anymore.
These are likely to be those ‘important but not urgent’ things like stepping back and thinking strategically about your next career moves.
From a work and career perspective, taking a step back to be strategic right now is critical.
That’s because we’re in a period of tremendous change in the workplace, and with major shifts happening, everything is still malleable.
However, you have to lift your head from the day-to-day to see what’s happening and understand how you want to play it.
For example, ways of working are changing, whether that’s location (the rise and or fall of hybrid working), or when work gets done (where recent trials of the four-day work-week are showing positive productivity results).
What does this mean for your part of the organisation and how do you want to position yourself?
What it means to lead well is changing. For example, ‘command and control’ no longer flies, while taking a coaching approach is succeeding, especially when teams become increasingly diverse.
How will you develop your leadership abilities to lead your team and show you’re capable of more?
Technology continues to accelerate the pace of change, driven by the impact of artificial intelligence on how we work and add value.
What will it mean for your team and for your career, and how can you stay ahead of the curve?
You have everything to play for — all that’s required is investing a little brain space in understanding what’s crucial instead of just doing what you’ve always done but a little better.
The danger is staying static. Like the frog sitting comfortably in a pot of warm water without realising it should have jumped out before the water boiled.
This is no time to allow the urgent to crowd out the important, or to let short-term thinking rule at the expense of the longer term.
In times of great change, it’s essential to be strategic and that starts with being able to envision what things might look like at a point in the future.
When did you last envision your career path and longer-term goals? What are you doing to set yourself up for future success?
Step back to think about your business area strategically.
How will the current marketplace trends affect your clients and customers? What are the implications for the way you operate internally?
Imagine how it will feel to propose ideas or make observations to help position the organisation that senior managers are impressed by and take action on.
Maybe you’ll get to lead the charge.
At a minimum, you’ll be seen as a strategic thinker and someone who cares about the organisation, not just taking orders and grinding out the work.
Taking time to step back and be strategic is essential for your career, and it’s far better than keeping your head down and grinding out more work.
The same is true for your overall life too.
What area will you make time to think strategically about and focus on first?
*May Busch works with smart entrepreneurs and top managements to build their businesses. She can be contacted at [email protected].
This article first appeared at maybusch.com
