Consider the options
Applying your strategic thinking skills also means assessing the trade-offs involved in selecting a particular course of action—and selecting the most appropriate trade-off.
In general, most decisions you make involve a trade-off.
For example:
- You oversee a product development group and your team is charged with creating a new product. The director of sales asks if you can release the product four weeks ahead of schedule to satisfy a major customer. You know this decision will require people in other groups—marketing, manufacturing, customer service, fulfillment, and so forth—to expedite their work for an earlier delivery date. You also know that the quality of the product could be jeopardized. You decide to risk losing the sale to the major customer and release the product on schedule as originally planned.
- Your budget for a major initiative has enough funding to cover three of the four deliverables you'd like to see the initiative provide. After talking with others in your company, you decide which deliverable to omit.
As these examples suggest, making trade-offs involves setting priorities, identifying alternatives, understanding the impact of your actions, and clarifying what you will strive to accomplish through a particular course of action—as well as what you won't seek to attain.