Understanding the 3 A’s of Strategic Thinking

Every leader and team member desires the ability to think strategically; however, the process of building your own strategic thinking skills can be difficult, as can encouraging strategic thinking in your team members.

Rich Horwath developed The three A’s of strategic thinking framework with a mission to improve the process of developing and utilizing strategic thinking.

The three A’s are acumen, allocation, and action.

1. Acumen

Acumen fuels the ability to analyze which variables are suitable to achieve a goal. It allows an individual to incorporate a variety of factors into an innovative idea or path. Acumen separates businesses from their competitors because it leads them to regularly attempt new ideas.

Acumen underscores analysis is one of the three purposes of strategic thinking.

However, acumen is often ignored for conventional, mainstream thinking. It is comfortable and doesn’t lead to change or disruption that might create additional work or effort. When organizations accept this way of operating, they fail in their strategy efforts and begin to plateau or decline.

Questions to help you tap into untapped acumen include:

• What is the new value I can add, create, or deliver?
• What is the key insight driving this initiative, project, or activity?
• What factors are we ignoring that can be used?
• What can we do that is different from our competition?
• How can we delve deeper into this topic?
• How can we use the current data and resources to achieve our goals?
• Do I (we) understand our company’s current strengths and weaknesses?
• Am I (we) repeating myself (ourselves)?
• Am I (we) listening to all perspectives?

Recommended: What Are the ABCs of Strategic Thinking?

2. Allocation

All leaders must manage allocation daily. When planning a project, you must balance team capabilities and availability with scheduling and resource accessibility. If you do not allocate resources properly, you will spread your team too thin, increasing the chances of failure.

You must learn when to deny requests that don’t offer strategic value. If a request is not feasible or beneficial, you should not invest time, money, or energy in it. It will leave you with a net negative. However, be aware of your approach and make sure you say no in a way that doesn’t stifle the strategic effort. You might also consider offering strategic alternatives if there is potential to an idea or concept.

Prompt questions on strategic allocation include:

• Where is the best use of our time?
• What will I (we) stop working on temporarily?
• What tasks can be delayed?
• Will this task or project improve the business?
• Are resources being wasted?
• Am I spreading the team too thin?
• Can we swap one resource for another without harming the project?
• Do we have backup sources of materials if a problem occurs?
• Am I using our team as efficiently as possible?
• Is our talent being wasted on these tasks?

Recommended: What Is Mintzberg’s 5P Strategy?

3. Action

Action is the third and final A of strategy. It is often considered the most important of the three A’s; however, without Acumen and Allocation, Action is a wasted effort. Action is not just about executing a project or making a decision; it is about determining what the top priorities are and how to best approach and manage them.

Action requires both leaders and team members to have effective communication and accountability skills. Without those elements, a detailed plan can easily fail in the execution phase.

Ask questions like these to evaluate your strategic action efforts:

• What action(s) do I, or the team, need to do to achieve the goal or vision?
• What are the top three priorities for the project?
• Am I focusing on the wrong tasks?
• Am I leading the team to focus on the wrong tasks?
• Are we overreacting to small issues?
• How do I ensure others are achieving their goals?

Recommended: The Frameworks and Approaches to Strategic Thinking in an Organization

Develop Strategic Thinkers with CMOE
Understanding what it means to strategically think and act requires time and discipline. The more resources and tools you provide, the better your team will become. CMOE can guide you and your team through all aspects of strategic thinking and execution with our 45 years of thought leadership.

Our learning programs, courses, and consulting services offer a proven approach to practice strategic thinking and build leadership capacity. Advance your capabilities through our Applied Strategic Thinking® Workshop today.