Do you think you’re a strategist? You’re probably wrong.
It is a cliche that everyone thinks they’re a strategist. The reason everyone thinks they’re a strategist is because they don’t know what a strategist does.
Get a reality check. Odds are you are not a strategist.
Strategy requires thinking conceptually and creating something from nothing. So, for the most part, if you need to see something in order to do strategy then you are not doing strategy, you’re doing editing.
Strategists usually favor thinking about the future instead of the present; strategists I admire are bored by what is and focus on what could be.
Also, strategy means constantly making decisions based on incomplete information. It means taking intellectual leaps of faith that could derail many departments in an organization, and doing that with confidence.
The best thing you can do for your career is take a personality test to understand your strengths. If you are an INTJ you really are a strategist. If you are not an INTJ, the fewer letters you have that match that, the further away from strategist you are. So get some self-knowledge before you declare yourself a strategist.
If you’re not a strategist, find work that plays to your strengths.
So look, most of you aren’t strategists. But so what? It doesn’t mean you’re not brilliant. There are many ways to be brilliant.
It is a misconception that the strategists do all the important work and everyone else does grunt work. There’s plenty of important, interesting work that is detail-oriented and highly creative, such as building a space ship or doing cinematography.
A lot of people think that if they are not creative or technical then they are strategists. This is not always true. A strategist thinks very big picture and also thinks ahead in time. People who are not artists or programmers and think in terms of the here and now are managers. If you do that with charisma, you’re a leader.
If you are a strategist, then quit talking about it and do it.
Most people I have managed have told me, at one point or another, that their strength is strategy. For the most part, I hear this as “I don’t know how to execute what you’re asking me to execute.” This is why the best way to understand how to do strategy is to execute on other peoples’ strategies. You see first-hand what the common pitfalls of strategy are.
Stop complaining that you are a frustrated strategist because today people at all levels in the organization are getting more opportunity to show their talent as strategists.
This trend is partly a result of management theorists focusing on improving work for the lower ranks–not because improving entry-level work is ethical, but because the topic of how to be a better leader is exhausted, and academics need something fresh to write about, according to the Wall Street Journal.
An example of this trend toward glorifying the low-ranking employee is the book Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders, by Barbara Kellerman, professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Research like Kellerman’s should drive home to you that if you’re a strategist, you can do it from anywhere in the org chart. So think of a great strategy in your entry-level job and then develop a strategy to convince people in the company to listen to you. That’s a test of your strategic strength right there.
And if you’re not doing strategy in your current job, you might consider that you are like the guy who thinks he is a novelist but is not writing a novel: People do what their strengths are regardless of what their job description is. Real leaders will lead in any situation they find themselves. Real writers will always write, no matter what their day job is. And real strategists will always think in terms of the conceptual future, from any job they have.
INTJs are the best. I’m an INTJ and I teach middle school. Talk about personality type mismatched to career. Maybe I should start looking for a job as a “strategist.”
Thanks Penelope.
so true. i was going to give a similar comment until i saw this one. well said.
How could a strategist be “someone who creates something from nothing”? This would correspond to someone being labeled “problem solver” who doesn’t know about a particular problem, but sets about to solve it. There must be some amount of information available, plus a realization that a problem or a need for a strategy exists, and these are not nothing.
I think that most peoply mean battle strategy when they call themselves (or other people) strategists. Also, most taoists share the qualities you have mentioned. Does that mean taoism is simply strategic thinking? Additionally, in order to see what could be (or could have been) you need to have a creative and imaginative mind, much like a “novelist” as you coarsly put it (thare are many kinds of novelists, andnovel thinkers for that matter). however, an interesting article and an interesting point of view!
p.s: by battle strategy I meant that people play stategy games such as “Rome: Total War” and are good at it so think thay are a strategist. Sorry for any confusion!!
Someone above mentioned that those with Ps would make better strategists because the perceiving function makes them more willing to explore further options. I have frequently noticed that people tend to place INTJs in the same box as ISTJs albeit with slightly more flexibility and they often classify INTPs/ENTPs into the “thinking outside the box” category just to “prove” that they are more intelligent/superior to other MBTI types. Is an unhealthy INTP a much better strategist than a healthy INTJ because of the perceiving function preference? Honestly, this is pure crap and egoism. The MBTI test only analyses how people prefer one function over the other. It does NOT mean that the less preferred functions are impaired. Everyone uses all the eight functions in their daily lives; it’s just a matter of frequency and how familiar they are with the lesser used functions. Every type has its strengths and weaknesses. People who stereotype and discriminate other types based on the S or J preferences are absolutely absurd. Being an ENTP does not make you a more brilliant person and being an ISTJ does not mean you are a hard-wired brain moron. The four letters do not define who you are. If you allow yourself to be constricted to the type your MBTI test states, then you are obviously not a strategist regardless of whether you are an ENTP or not.
this article would make sense, if ideas were actually original. no artist, strategist, or conceptualist bases their production from a void.
Hi I discovered that I am a INTJ, so I’m a strategist and what, what does that mean, how it will affect my life.
I’m 16 years old.
Thank
Hm. I’m an INFP. I think the tone of this article is pretty dreadful…And I would cut out every line in it except the last four lines.
I’m not a strategist because I am not someone who is employed to do strategy. But thinking strategically is my strongest talent as identified by my strengthsfinder profile and confirmed by my excelling in political strategy classes as well as my love for all things strategy. Thinking strategically literally energizes me. That being said everything about this article rubs me the wrong way. From the title to the article itself this article seems to be written to alienate strategic thinkers and non strategic thinkers alike. Excessive negativity will never pass as motivation.
I am an INTJ, though weak on the J preference. I have found the 16-types more helpful in understanding other people than understanding myself. The test that really helped me understand me was the brain dominance test. I am balanced between the left and right side of my brain so I have had trouble finding a job that is both creative and analytical. But merely discovering that fact about me has been life changing. I used to think there was something wrong with me that it has taken me so long to find the right career goal.
fuck u bitch iam a strategist
Say “thanks” you for your mothers and fathers they gave you the world
For me the article was thought provoking. More intriguing to me is the responses over the years.
I am with no doubt a strategiest. Good, bad and indifferent, it is something I cannot change. Personally, I didn’t understand it, never exploited it, just lived it. It wasn’t until I matured through a number of pioneering endeavors and life in general that I realized that without the void, I am nothing. I admire very much the person who is comfortable with their job, their life, their relationships, I have accepted I am who I am and I do what I do. I often enable that comfort when a company is faced with decline, so deep in the forest they don’t see the trees, or an engineer has a great invention but no clue how to take it to market. I am able to consume and process vast amounts of information, formulate concepts and to shed light on the potential and create the business plan, road map, and ‘what ifs’ to keep it dynamic and on track.
I’m a INTJ and my top 2 StrengthFinder skills are:
1.) Strategic
2.) Analytical
This article has been very helpful in realizing that Strategic Planning is my strong point and has made me want to reach a little higher than I have in the past!
So Thanks!
I think Spartacus could’ve used a lesson or two on strategy. He was a great tactician but a lousy strategist. “On to Rome!” “Neh! let’s take a boat trip” xD lol.
I’m an INTJ and have been since high school (with the occasional change to INFJ, INTP). Some things that irk me when I am at my work setting:
– People seem to associate having an extravert function as having leadership so I get called in to conduct meetings, workshops and so on. I find that this clashes with my innate need to make the most use of time as well as no BS approach to office politics where a certain individuals have to be invited and therefore ballooning said meeting to 10+ people. However when I do conduct a meeting or a workshop which I feel is needed then I do an excellent job at it.
– I get this feeling that people don’t trust my expertise because of my T and J functions where I require time to process and evaluate the answers. The reason why I don’t give out an answer on the spot is because I need to comprehend it, test it out (2, 3 times…), do various case scenarios to test out any weaknesses and gaps with my theories and then communicate it. Another reason why I feel like this is out of personal development and also the fact that I need to trust my judgement and intuition more and be more confident.
– Being a natural strategist as well in my personal life means that I am constantly pitting life-changing decisions based on constantly changing data pulled out from my personal life, from work, from finances and so on. Which means that I seem to be in a constant state of both being absolutely assured and paranoid with what the future will bring.
I suppose this relates to self-development but it really really irritates me when I have my line manager saying something
I find the beneficial cause I am a budding Strategist who day and think about future of Africa.
I don’t really believe in paraphrasing failed effort others.
Some typo errors in my comment above.My take is Strategists r just people born with vision and live in positive world no matter what!!
Never thought of using the word until I found your post, afterwhich, I changed my Professional Headline.
Signing up for blog updates. Good work.
I’m quite glad to see people don’t understand much about MBTI, let alone strategy in itself. That means there won’t be much competition in the future.
Miyamoto Musashi one of world’s greatest strategic minds on war was an ISTP, Steve Jobs was an ISTP, Putin is an ISTP.
Napoleon was an ENTJ.
Alexander the great was an ESTP.
Hannibal De Carthage happened to be an INTJ.
I see that for an INTJ you have a great misunderstanding of ‘MBTI’ and an even greater misunderstanding of cognitive levels over cognitive preferences. An ESFP could be a smarter strategist than you, because they could simply have a higher IQ than you do. Personality may tell you that you’re better suited for this or that, but if you’re not smart enough, then you’re simply not smart enough. Statistically speaking, a lot of INTJs are correlated with a high level of IQ, but there are tons of INTJs with an average(if-not lower) IQ. Besides, there have been an awful lot of cases in-which the use of the Myers-Briggs test has been off as day and night, hence people don’t make much use of it in positive psychology.
Maybe the only forms of strategy you’re referring to is organization or the use of mind-maps and company innovations to succeed and all these pretty cool things, but the confines of strategy aren’t limited to brands.
You did make quite a point about proving your abilities by using them from beginning to the end.
PS: There appears to be quite a lot of INTernetJs online and this personality happens to be quite popular and romanticized since the films like Hannibal Lecter and Sherlock Holmes, because since 2011, there has been quite an increase in the elite INTJ which was a mere 1.5% in America. I suggest people be honest with the test and take it quite seriously, because there’s no such thing as a job as a strategist.