The road to success is paved by good strategy plans. It takes time to delineate a good strategist from an average one. But if followed over a period of time, successful strategists show the following traits:
- Choice:
Successful business strategy executives know how to make choices that succeed. They are able to pick ramifications of the alternatives and select the best way forward. They know their competitors and markets and are able to pick the right segments for their products.
- Care:
Good strategists are truly passionate about their cause. They believe in their mission and care for their organization’s growth. They also have the power to channel people around them toward it.
- Focus and Vision:
Successful strategists exude focus. They are persistent and follow their goals relentlessly. They are willing to go above and beyond the usual with their efforts and can reject smaller short term gains for bigger long term results.
Global strategy and leadership demand keener vision and a sharper knowledge of the global economy.
- Decision making:
With clear goals in their head, good strategists can easily take day-to-day decisions. All these decisions lead to bigger goals in the future. They can decode their strategy in simple words for other people to understand.
- Simplification:
Chris Zook and James Allen from Bain & Company, in their book Repeatability, pointed out that complexity can be a big hurdle for performance. Great strategists understand that and so they make complex things and operations simpler.
The define both long term and short term objectives. Achievement of short term achievements leads to the fulfillment of long term goals.
- Storytelling:
PowerPoint presentations can only present facts and numbers but stories connect people emotionally. A good business strategy executive understands this and so they use more of storytelling to convey their thoughts and ideas. Besides, research by Jerome Bruner says that it becomes twenty times easier for anyone to remember facts if they are presented in the form of a story.
- Execution:
Having an idea is not enough. Business strategy executives dig in the idea and chalk out its workability. As a matter of fact, even an excellent strategy can go all wrong if not executed in the right manner. Therefore, execution is the key to a successful business strategy.
- Mentorship:
Good business strategist executive inspires others to think and go beyond the conventional ways. It is the bad ones who show off. A strategist who is laborious and secure in their own skin do not feel the need to brag. They believe in passing their knowledge and ideas to others for building a strong team of people.
- Flexibility and Intuitiveness:
Good strategists anticipate the hurdles and maneuver around them instead. They see the obstacles coming and seldom land on them unaware. In other words, intuition is a tool that celebrated strategists use to predict challenges and find solutions for them in advance before it is too late. Their agility enables them to get their business to pull out of any undesirable situation as swiftly as possible.
