6 Ways to Bring Strategy into Your Work Every Day

Broadly, the best way to get better at developing strategy:

1. Spend time understanding your market (including your competition)


2. Spend time understanding your customers and their needs


3. Spend time crafting and executing strategies — and learn from those experiences


4. Study colleagues who are great strategic thinkers


5. Read about strategy

Lastly, as you execute on your strategy, in the back of your mind, always be thinking about how you can refine and strengthen the strategy. What would make it better, stronger, and clearer? A good strategy is never static. 

Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve somethin... See more

Every day, create a list of your top three daily priorities, with the first being your top priority. Take time to really consider whether these are the most important places to invest your energy, and if they are not, replace them with something that will bring greater meaning to you and your business. This practice will give you clarity around wha... See more

You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.