How Do I Become a Strategist?

Strategy isn't something you become. It's something you're already practicing every time you solve a problem that doesn't have a playbook yet. Own it!

3 Ways You're Already Being a Strategist:
1️⃣ You're anticipating what's next. When you flag a potential roadblock before it derails a project, or make a recommendation before it becomes a compliance risk, you're thinking ahead. That's strategy.
2️⃣ You're aligning resources with goals. Every time you prioritize features, allocate budget, or decide where your team should focus next, you're making strategic choices about how to achieve outcomes with finite resources.
3️⃣ You're creating pathways to value. Whether you're designing a customer onboarding flow, building a change management plan, or mapping a digital transformation roadmap, you're architecting how organizations and people get from problem to solution. That's strategic design.

3 Ways to Amplify Your Strategic Impact:
1️⃣ Make your thinking visible. I've said this before. Document the "why" behind your decisions. When you share your reasoning (not just your recommendations), you help others see the strategic value you're creating.
2️⃣ Connect your work to business outcomes. Practice articulating how your initiatives ladder up to revenue, retention, risk reduction, or competitive advantage. Strategy speaks the language of impact.
3️⃣ Build your strategic community. Seek out people who think differently from you. The best strategists I know regularly talk to people in sales, operations, finance, and customer-facing roles to expand their perspective.

The reality? Strategic thinking isn't a job title or a special certification. It's a practice. It's the habit of asking better questions, seeing patterns across domains, and connecting today's actions to tomorrow's outcomes.

You're already doing this work. The question isn't whether you're a strategist; it's how intentionally you're showing up as one!

For those of us who need something a little more solid, consider these categories of questions to get better aligned strategically, according to research from IMD Business School professors published in HBR:
1. Investigative - What's known?
2. Speculative - What if?
3. Productive - What works?
4. Interpretive - What does it mean?
5. Subjective - What feels right?

What's one strategic decision you've made recently? Drop it in the comments. I'd love to celebrate it with you. 👇

Let's get out there and make it real!