Sometimes senior leaders may agree you are an ideal person for your current role. However, they might also think you are not strategically minded enough for promotion to a more senior role.
How to demonstrate strategic thinking?
To do this, you need to be a bit of a marketer, a salesperson, and an agent of change … which is clearly no easy task. To demonstrate such an ability, you need to:
- communicate your strategic efforts proactively
- be willing to challenge others when appropriate
- show drive when promoting and pushing your strategic ideas
You need to do all of this in order to make your boss notice that you do indeed have strategic thinking skills.
Let them know what you think: share your point of view
Basically you need to make them agree you are ready to take decisions with a bigger impact, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review. You might try to:
- update your understanding of trends
- refresh your network in the company
- ensure you have some time (20-30 minutes) before important meetings to be able to collect your thoughts and be ready to voice them as well
- discuss with your peers what impact the new ideas would have on their areas
- initiate innovation and push strategic change by communicating projects and their milestones across your company
By first gaining the knowledge and then leveraging it at meetings, you will make valuable contributions which will not go unnoticed. You need to do your best to shift from providing operational input to offering strategic input.
-jk-